HBftARY OF CONfiRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. *| 



BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 



VIEWS OF THE 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST, 



THE COMFORTER, AND TRINITY. 



BY A LAYMAN. 






BOSTON: , 



PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR 

BY A. WILLIAMS AND CO. 

135 WASHINGTON ST. 
1874. 



el 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

ASA WILBUR, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



boston : 

Press of Rand, Avery and Company, 

117 franklin street. 



PREFACE. 



The sentiments presented to the Christian 
public in the following little work are not the 
result of hastily or recently adopted conclu- 
sions. For more than forty years they have 
existed as settled convictions in the author's 
mind. 

They have been a solace and satisfaction to 
him in no ordinary sense. 

They have been a triumphant support 
under all the vicissitudes of a protracted life ; 
not, indeed, to the exclusion or disparagement 
in any wise of any one of the great vital Scrip- 
tural truths essential to true discipleship and 
practical godliness : indeed, he maintains that 
these fundamental doctrines themselves are 
more clearly seen, and their simplicity and 
consistency better understood and more truly' 



6 PREFACE. 

appreciated, from the views presented in the 
following pages than from the general exposi- 
tion of them. 

It has seemed to the writer well-nigh unac- 
countable, that, the (to him) plain teachings 
of the New Testament, and especially those of 
Christ himself, should have been so misappre- 
hended, and theories adopted in their place 
which certainly are unnatural, and confessed- 
ly shrouded in impenetrable mystery. 

Should the question be asked, Why have 
not these sentiments, and long cherished con- 
victions, been sooner made public ? The re- 
ply is, his extreme reluctance at the thought of 
advancing doctrines he well knew would be 
different from those of his brethren, with 
whom he has so long and so happily toiled, to 
advance the kingdom of their common Re- 
deemer. He was unwilling to excite their 
apprehensions and suspicions, which he well 
knew would be the natural result. These 
with some other minor considerations, have 
hitherto prevented his views from being pub- 



PREFACE. 7 

licly known. It would not be strange if mis- 
conceptions of the course of thought, or, in- 
deed, a full sense of the author's meaning, 
should excite opposition. He is aware of the 
position he has taken ; but, feeling a perfect 
confidence that in what he has advanced he 
stands side by side with the Saviour of men, he 
has thus stepped out of his usual pursuit in life, 
and has thrown himself open to whatever of 
criticism, or censure his Master may see 
proper to lay upon him. He is not unmind- 
ful of the undesirable issue he takes upon 
himself. But, if he has the truth of the Mas- 
ter, he certainly has his approbation ; and he 
who could use an earnest though unlettered 
Peter to convert three thousand persons in 
one day, surely will not frown on one whose 
endeavor is to explain his character and show 
his supremacy. 

He is conscious that what is brought for- 
ward in the following treatise, is but an out- 
line of what might and what ought to be said 
on the subjects treated. Let them be in the 



8 PREFACE. 

hands of an erudite person, and there is 
matter enough to fill a large volume. 

May the " Spirit of truth," the Comforter, 
whose prerogative it is to "guide into all 
truth," enlighten and conduct the reader as he 
contemplates these important subjects ! — is 
the prayer of the author. 



THE 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST, THE COMFORTER, 
AND THE TRINITY. 



STATEMENT OF VIEWS. 

Before the creation of any object, there 
existed the one almighty, omniscient, self- 
existent Deity, who filled all space, having 
cognizance of all objects and actions. 

At a period in the existence of this eternal 
God, before any other creative act known to 
us, he brought forth, or begot, a being of the 
nature, powers, and senses, such as he after- 
wards breathed into the body of Adam when 
he became a "living soul." In other words, 
he begot a perfect human soul. 

Thus there were in existence before the 
creation of the world two beings, — one the 
self-existent God, the other the derived being ; 
or, as we will now call them, Father and Son. 
Each has his own will : but the wills are not 



IO BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

at variance, but in perfect harmony ; for, in the 
nature of things, a holy being could not beget 
an unholy. 

Before this period, God existed as one God ; 
but, so far as we know, not as Father, because 
there was no Son. The derived being was 
Son, — " the only begotten Son." 

The next act of the eternal God was to take 
this begotten being into perfect union with 
himself ; so that the two beings, with their 
distinct natures and wills, became by union 
one. Separately they were two, but through 
the union one. A being thus constituted 
must necessarily have the nature, faculties, 
and powers belonging to each before their 
union. There was thus in heaven before the 
creation, a complex being, divine and human, — 
divine because one of his component parts is 
the eternal God, human because the other 
part is the begotten human soul or Son. 

The nature or manner of this union we do 
not attempt to explain ; but its reality is con- 
ceivable, and no more mysterious than our 
own formation. We are composed of spirit 
and matter, each as really unlike the other as 
deity and humanity ; and yet these two, mat- 
ter and spirit, are so united as to compose one 



STATEMENT OF VIEWS. I I 

person, yet acting in perfect harmony, each 
retaining its distinctive properties. But the 
manner or nature of this union is inexplicable. 
Now, as we can conceive of, but cannot ex- 
plain, this union of our own nature, even so 
we may conceive of, but cannot explain, the 
union of deity and humanity. The fact is as 
reasonable and admissible in the one case as 
in the other. 

We are now prepared to look at the ac- 
counts of the creation ; and we must not lose 
sight of the character of the being who is the 
Creator. It is the complex being, — Father 
and Son, divine and human (human soul, not 
a body yet). The begotten Son, of himself, 
had no more power to create than Christ, as a 
man on earth, had power to do God's works : 
according to his own declaration, " The Son 
can do nothing of himself" (John v. 19) ; but, 
being one with the Almighty, by and with His 
power he could create. Hence the harmony 
of the two passages : " In the beginning God 
created the heaven and the earth" (Gen. i. 1) ; 
and Col. i. 16, "By him (Christ) were all 
things created that are in heaven and that are 
in earth." It was proper, therefore, to say 
God created and the Son created ; because 



12 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

they were united as one in the creation, the 
Father operating with and in the Son, and the 
Son by and through the power of the Father. 

On this principle Jesus performed his mira- 
cles when on earth : he said to the leprous 
man, " I will ; be thou clean." There is no 
more mystery in the one case than in the other. 
All will see that it as really required divine 
power to heal the leper as to produce the light 
or gather the waters together ; yet it is truly 
said that Christ healed the leper, though in 
reality God the Father performed the cure 
through his Son, according to the words of 
Jesus, " The Father that dwelleth in me, he 
doeth the works." 

After the material world was created, and 
the grand crowning work of the creation was 
to be accomplished, for the first time we hear 
a communication between the two wills in 
heaven. It runs thus, " Let us make man in 
our image, after our likeness ; " that is, as we 
understand, " Let us make a being of the same 
nature, faculties, and senses, and of the same 
purity and holiness, as that begotten being 
which forms a part of Ourself." The being 
that was to inhabit the earthly body was to be 
in all respects " in the image and likeness " of 



STATEMENT OF VIEWS. 1 3 

the first-begotten Son, now united with his 
Father. 

First, a tenement of earth was prepared, 
adapted to the being who was to inhabit it, in 
which he might develop and exercise himself 
in the sphere which he was to fill. Then into 
this tenement God breathed the breath of life, 
and man became a living soul, but not a be- 
gotten Son united to the Father ; for God, in 
unison with the pre-existing Son, created a 
human soul in the likeness of the one united 
to himself. It matters not which word is used, 
— " breathed," or " created," or " said : " the 
work was the act of this complex being. All 
must see that the "breathing" needed an 
accompanying divine power ; for not only was 
a soul imparted, but animal life was given, and 
the body of earth changed into a complete 
human body with its almost innumerable func- 
tions and powers. 

Thus man was formed and placed on earth 
by the same power and the same beings (for 
the word " us " is used by them) that formed 
whatever else was created. 

Here, then, was placed on earth a being fitly 
emblematical of his Creator; the spirit corre- 
sponding to the deity of the Creator, the body 



14 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

to the begotten human soul, and the two 
natures in each case so united as to make one. 
In speaking of tnem, we call the being in 
heaven " God," " Lord God," " God of Jacob," 
" God of Israel," and so on, each name in- 
cluding both natures acting together. The 
being on earth we call "man," the term also in- 
cluding the two natures of which he is com- 
posed acting together : and, as the spirit of 
man never communicates except through the 
organs of the body, the inferior part acting 
with it ; so the eternal Deity communicates 
with man only by and through the begotten 
human Son, the inferior part united with him. 
In this arrangement we see wisely estab- 
lished, before man was placed on earth, a 
channel or medium of communication between 
God and the human family ; a being of the 
same species and nature as the human race, 
whose natural sympathies would be with his 
brother on earth, and so united to the eternal 
God that the divine sympathies, also, through 
him, could flow to man on earth even in his 
fallen state. Apart from such union, we see 
not how God could have shown more sym- 
pathy towards rebellious man than towards 
rebellious angels. 



STATEMENT OF VIEWS. 1 5 

With this agree the words of the Lamb of 
God : " I am the way ; " and, " No man cometh 
unto the Father, but by me " (John xiv. 6). 

After the lapse of about four thousand 
years from the creation of man, this begotten 
being, human soul, or Son, — call him which 
you will, — who had dwelt "in the bosom of 
the Father," in happy union with him, from 
before the foundation of the world, and " by 
whom God created all things," left his celes- 
tial abode, and came down to earth ; where, by 
the divine energy, through the Blessed Virgin, 
a body was prepared for him. In this body 
he developed his knowledge and wisdom as 
fast as the growth of its organs would allow. 
In leaving heaven, however, the Son did not 
cease to be united with his Father. The 
union was not less perfect on earth than it 
had been in heaven. 

But, " though he was rich, he became poor : " 
that is, he was divested of the glory and 
majesty which he had with his Father in 
heaven. This divesting was necessary, that 
he might appear as a servant, become familiar 
with his brother man in his fallen state, dwell 
with him as one of them, and " be tempted in 
all points like as we are, yet without sin." 



1 6 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

And now we have before us Christ as he 
was in Palestine, — truly God and truly man. 
Begotten of the Holy Ghost, God thus be- 
came the father of both his soul and body. 
Born of a woman as other men, he was placed 
by birth " under the law," and was naturally 
" the Son of man." 

At the same time, being as to his soul the 
" beginning of the creation of God," and as to 
his body being begotten of God ; he is, if we 
may so say, in a twofold sense " the Son of 
God." And since, as before stated, he is so 
united to God that he and his Father are One ; 
we have God and man, divinity and humanity, 
complete in the person of Jesus Christ. 

We have thus stated, as clearly and sim- 
ply as we can, our views of the origin of the 
divinity and humanity of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. Are these views in accordance with 
the word of God ? are they taught in that 
sacred volume ? If so, they are true, and must 
and will stand and triumph ; all opposing 
theories on the subject, ancient or modern, 
to the contrary notwithstanding. 

It is not at all improbable that many, on 
reading thus far, will throw this little treatise 



STATEMENT OF VIEWS. 1 7 

aside, and denounce it as heretical, and unwor- 
thy of further attention. They have been 
taught, and they believe, that the divinity of 
Christ, his sonship, &c, are a mystery, and 
utterly incomprehensible by human reason. 
Millions of Christ's children, learned and un- 
learned, past and present, have quieted their 
inquiries with this conclusion. 

Would it not be well that the Christian 
reader should not be hasty in pronouncing 
judgment ? The Bereans " searched the Scrip- 
tures daily, whether those things were so;" 
and we all know the happy result. 

Before proceeding to an examination of the 
Scriptures, let us quote the language of one 
of our theological professors, whose senti- 
ments we most heartily adopt. 

" Our fundamental principle is, that the 
Scriptures alone are our guide in all matters 
of faith and practice. To this principle we 
should unhesitatingly conform, whatever may 
be the result. We should not shrink from its 
application, even if it should overturn cus- 
toms which have been most venerated by us, 
and should lead us to act contrary to all the 
teachings of our fathers." — Bib. Sacra, p. 29, 
vol. 30. 

2* 



15 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

Just on this "fundamental principle'' we 
have endeavored to study the Scriptures ; and 
it has compelled us to adopt the doctrines 
herein presented. If the reader will adhere 
to this principle in examining these subjects, 
we shall have no fears of the result. 

Once more : in the examination of Scrip- 
ture now to be made, we adopt and recom- 
mend the language of another theological 
professor, though not perhaps of the Trinita- 
rian faith. 

" We should never have recurrence to a 
strained or metaphysical sense, but when we 
know, that, either from the nature of the thing 
or from some other revelation of Scripture, it 
will not admit of a proper one. We must 
understand words in their proper and natural 
sense, when there is no apparent reason for a 
figure." 

PRE-EXISTENCE OF CHRIST. 

We will now take up the sacred vol- 
ume, confidently believing that the writers 
thereof wrote as they were moved by the 
Holy Spirit ; and we will look to the same 
Guide to direct us in our examinations. 



PRE-EXISTANCE OF CHRIST. 19 

That Christ, as the Son of God, did exist 
before his incarnation, is admitted by all or 
nearly all evangelical Christians. One would 
suppose that the assertion of Christ, " Before 
Abraham was, I am " (John viii. 50), would 
here be decisive, and convince the most scru- 
pulous of the fact. He evidently intended to 
convey the idea that he existed before the 
days of Abraham. He was so understood. If 
he thus intended, and did not so exist, he was 
either a lunatic or guilty of falsehood ; and the 
Jews were right in rejecting him. But we 
"believe and are sure that he was that Christ, 
the son of the living God," and that he did 
exist before Abraham. 

Again he says (John xvii. 5), " Now, O 
Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, 
with the glory which I had with thee before 
the world was." Paul taught the same to 
several of the churches. To the Colossians 
he says (chap. i. 17), "He was before all 
things," &c. On this point we need not 
quote further, as it is not generally disputed 
by evangelical believers. 



20 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 

The question now is, In what character 
did he exist ? The answer of the Church 
would be, As the divine, eternal Son of God ; 
or perhaps as the second person in the di- 
vine Trinity. 

In our answer to this question, our first 
point will be to show that the Scriptures 
chiefly relied on to prove the eternal exist- 
ence of the Son do not sustain that doctrine; 
but that many of them, as well as others, 
fully show that his existence had a beginning. 
But, before proceeding further, let us ask our- 
selves, Can we for the present lay aside all 
preconceived views, and take the sacred vol- 
ume as addressed to us personally, from our 
heavenly Father, for the purpose of teaching 
us his will and the principles of his kingdom ? 
It is in this spirit only that we can hope to 
succeed in our inquiries after truth. 

We can be sure of getting correct informa- 
tion, only when.willing to surrender, if need- 
ful, any previously formed doctrinal opinions. 
No person finds Christ to be a Saviour to him- 
self personally, till he makes a complete sur- 
render of all things else. Even so in learning 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 21 

" the things of Christ." However wise, we 
must become " fools " as to our wisdom, for 
Christ's sake. We must take the inspired 
word as a child would take a lesson from his 
father; and seek the enlightening aid of the 
Comforter, the Holy Spirit, who the Saviour 
promised should " guide us into all truth." 

As the venerable John Brown of Hadding- 
ton said, on finishing his Family Bible, " I 
have learned more of the true meaning of the 
Bible on my knees before God, than from all 
the commentators I ever consulted.'' 

Following strictly the rules of interpreta- 
tion to which we have referred, we think we 
are prepared to show, that the doctrine of an 
eternal divine sonship, as generally received 
by the Church, has no sanction in the Bible ; 
consequently it must have been of men ; and 
that the Son must be a distinct, derived being, 
as in our first statement. 

Our first selection shall be the first eigh- 
teen verses of the first chapter of John's Gos- 
pel. This is selected because it is much re- 
lied on as proof of the eternity of the Logos 
or Son. Let us examine. " In the begin- 
ning " — In the beginning of what ? we ask. 
Surely not the beginning of eternity : eter- 



22 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

nity has no beginning ; otherwise it is not 
eternity. It is observable that John begins 
his history of Christ with the same words 
with which Moses commences his account of 
the creation of the world. " In the begin- 
ning God created the heavens and the earth " 
(Gen. i. i). John's "beginning," therefore, 
was evidently the same as that of Moses : 
most assuredly, then, they both refer to the 
beginning of the visible creation. 

Do these words in John's Gospel show that 
the Word or Logos was from eternity? Do 
they bear a different meaning when used by 
John than when used by Moses ? Where is 
the authority for such difference ? How is 
it, then, that these three words have been re- 
lied on for these hundreds of years, and 
quoted by so many writers, as decisive proof 
that the Word or Son was from all eternity ? 
Placing these two narratives side by side, do 
they not teach that there was a period in 
God's existence when he commenced the 
creation of the world, and that the Word or 
Son was with him at that period ? Do they 
take us beyond that period ? 

It will be seen that these narratives agree 
also in recognizing two beings — a plurality — 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 23 

present on the occasion. Moses says in verse 
16, as has been noted, "And God said, Let as 
make man," &c, showing that there were two 
at least, in the formation of man : and we 
reasonably infer that there were two in the 
previous creation, — an inference that John 
supports when he says, " and the Word was 
with God" (showing that there were two : 
otherwise it could not with propriety be said 
that one was with another); which is also 
abundantly supported by other Scriptures, to 
which we shall hereafter refer. 

We see, then, that, if our views as to the 
period intended by John be correct, this stron- 
gest passage in the hands of those who believe 
in the eternal generation of the Son proves 
nothing more than that the Son existed and 
was with God at the beginning of the creation, 
— a view to which we heartily subscribe. 

John does not say that the Word was or 
was not eternal. All he affirms is, that he 
was with God at a certain period. One may 
infer that he was eternally with him : another, 
that he was with him just before the com- 
mencement of the creation. Both are infer- 
ences ; but neither, proof. 

The idea that all before the "beginning" of 



24 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

which John speaks must be eternal, has so 
long prevailed in the evangelical Church, that 
if one should inquire of a theologian whether 
there is Scripture evidence of the eternity of 
the Son of God, he would with much assur- 
ance refer to the first two verses of John's 
Gospel as settling the question. Should the 
authority of such a rendering be disputed, he 
would call to his support the great body of 
writers of the evangelical Church on the sub- 
ject, from the early fathers down to the present 
day. 

Commentators generally, following each 
other in sentiment if not in words, in their 
expositions on these verses, have become so 
fixed in their belief, that they do support that 
doctrine, — that they unhesitatingly assert it 
as a fact. We will quote some modern writers 
in confirmation of this statement. 

Dr. John Gill, a learned English commen- 
tator, says of the second verse, " This is a 
repetition of what is before said, and is made 
to show the eternity of Christ ; and so proves 
not only the eternal existence, but his eternal 
existence with his Father, and also his eternal 
deity." Does the text warrant such a state- 
ment ? 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 25 

Matthew Henry says, in his remarks on this 
Scripture (and we would say that no writer 
we have known appears so much at home in 
the Bible as he), "The beginning of time, in 
which all creatures were produced and brought 
into being, found this eternal Word in being." 
Note, it is Mr. Henry who calls the Word 
eternal, not John. He adds, " He that was 
in the beginning never began," — beginning 
of our world, of course ; for we know of no 
other beginning except Jesus, who tells us he 
was " the beginning of creation" (Rev. iii. 14). 

Mr. Henry again says, on verse 2, " The 
same, the very same that we believe in and 
preach, was in the beginning with God : that 
is, he was from eternity T 

So says Mr. Henry ; but is it in the text ? 
Again : " The history of man's redemption 
. . . was hid in God before all worlds ; " and he 
quotes Eph. iii. 9. The common translation 
reads thus : " The mystery which from the 
beginning of the world [not "all worlds"] 
hath been hid in God, who created all things 
by Jesus Christ." Another translation which 
we have consulted reads, " from ages has been 
hidden," &c. Query: What ages before the 
world was created ? 



26 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

Dr. Thomas Scott, in his commentary on 
this passage, speaks thus : " Nothing could ex- 
ceed time but an immeasurable, incompre- 
hensible eternity. Time began when the 
creation was called forth into existence by the 
Word himself: and in the beginning the Word 
was ; that is, from all eternity? Note, it is 
Dr. Scott who says " from all eternity." 

Dr. Adam Clarke, in his comments, says, 
" What was before creation must be eternal: 
therefore Jesus, who was ' before all things/ 
and who made all things, must necessarily be 
the eternal God " (the Italicising is ours). 

These writers are selected because so well 
known, and esteemed for their erudition and 
Biblical knowledge. 

It will be seen, their proof for the eternity 
of the Son, drawn from the passage cited, 
rests on the assumption that whatever existed 
prior to the creation must be eternal. This 
is the only fair deduction we can make from 
these declarations. Now, does the narrative 
of Moses or of John express or imply such an 
idea ? Was nof Moses speaking simply of the 
creation of our world ? Does any one who reads 
his history imagine he had any thought of 
what might have been previously created ? 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 27 

His object was to record the facts of the crea- 
tion of the material world ; saying nothing, 
hinting nothing, concerning the origin of the 
Son of God : this was left for inspired 
writers of later days. Likewise in reference 
to the "beginning " of which John speaks: 
would any reader naturally, without prepos- 
session, suppose any thing was intended by his 
word " beginning," other than what has been 
written by Moses ? A man may draw such 
inference as may please him ; but to assert an 
inference as a fact, and then deduce proof from 
it, is a course of reasoning we are unable to 
follow. 

Let us now read the remainder of the verse : 
" and the Word was God." It will be remem- 
bered that in the third paragraph of our State- 
ment of Views on page I, the position is taken 
that God united the begotten Son to himself in 
such a way that the two became one. We 
will, for the moment, assume the correctness 
of this position with regard to the Father and 
the Logos or Son. The reality of this union 
will be considered hereafter. 

If, then, the Logos or Word is a derived 
being ; and if the Father has taken him into 
union with himself in the manner we have as- 



28 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

sumed, — it would be in accordance with John's 
use of language to call him God, on the ground 
of this union. In the fourteenth verse of this 
chapter John says, " And the Word was made 
flesh, and dwelt among us." No one ever in- 
ferred from this statement that John meant 
that the Word, who " was with God, and was 
God," was transformed into human flesh. All 
understand that " he was made flesh " by 
being united to flesh, so that he and flesh 
became one by the union. Is it more singular 
that John should say of the begotten Son, 
who was united to God his Father, that he 
was God, than that he should say he became 
flesh ? But John adds, " And we beheld his 
glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the 
Father." 

What glory was that ? And to what does 
John refer when he says, "as of the only- 
begotten of the Father " ? Was the reference 
to the physical body of Christ ? True, that 
body was begotten of God ; but what glory 
was there of his body only, more than of the 
body of another man? Was it not that of 
the Father, united with that body and mani- 
fested through its organs, so that the apostles 
could see his operations ? 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 29 

As Jesus said, " I am in the Father, and 
the Father [not a divine Son] in me " (John 
xiv. 10). 

Was it not the Father manifesting himself 
through the man Jesus, soul and body, that 
the apostles saw ? And this is according to 
Christ's words, " He that hath seen me hath 
seen the Father" (John xiv. 9). No one had 
seen the Father in any way but by his works 
which he had wrought in and by his Son. 
John uses similar language in his first Epistle, 
i. 1,2: " That which was from the beginning, 
which we have heard, which we have seen 
with our eyes, which we have looked upon, 
and our hands have handled, of the Word of 
life (for the life was manifested, and we have 
seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you 
that eternal life, which was with the Father, 
and was manifested unto us)." 

It is evident that John had never seen, heard, 
or handled any thing of Christ except his 
human body, which of itself was merely flesh, 
blood, and bones ; and yet he says that he had 
seen, &c, the " Word of life," and " the eternal 
life which was with the Father, and was mani- 
fested unto us." 

Here, then, we see his familiar manner of 



30 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

expression. What he had seen, heard, and 
handled could refer to one part only of Christ, 
— his body ; and in this he is not misunder- 
stood. Nearly all agree that that body which 
the apostles saw and handled was so united to 
the soul, and the soul and body so united to 
God, that all three by the union became one 
person. We have thus three distinct natures 
joined in one person ; and, consequently, lan- 
guage applicable to any one of the three 
natures may include the whole person, — body, 
soul, and God. 

If, then, the derived Son was united to God 
as the body to the soul, could it be more im- 
proper or unnatural for John to say that the 
" Word was God," than for him to say that " we 
have seen, handled, &c, the Word of life"? 
Truly, the Word or Son was with God, and was 
God ; and the term " Christ," as we understand 
it, includes all the three natures united in one. 

In what respect does the language and mean- 
ing of John differ from ours ? We say " the 
Word was God," in precisely the same manner 
in which John said he " was God," and " was 
made flesh : " i.e., by union with each. If we 
could once get these ideas clearly into our 
minds, together with the fact that he and the 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 3 1 

Father were one in the only possible way in 
which deity and humanity can be one (that 
is, by union), then the first eighteen verses of 
John's Gospel, and the first two verses of his 
Epistle, would appear clear, natural, and ration- 
al. John seems to have had a much clearer 
knowledge of the origin, nature, and character 
of Christ, and of the object of his errand into 
our world, than either of the other evangelists, 
or even Paul, who was so well instructed in 
the things of God's kingdom ; and he might 
well have this superiority, after his most sub- 
lime interview with Christ, and the revelation 
which he received from him in the desolate 
island. 

The Adversary thought that he had shut 
John out of the world, and put him quite 
beyond the power of further usefulness to 
the cause of truth, when he had him banished 
to that lonely island : but, as commonly in 
his onsets on Christ's kingdom, his work re- 
coiled with double force on his own head ; 
for in what spot on the face of the earth 
could this apostle have been placed, where, 
all things considered, he would have been so 
useful to the cause of Christ ? 

We now leave it to the reader to judge 



32 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

whether there is any evidence of the eternity 
of the Son in these first verses of John's 
Gospel. Writers have, indeed, as heretofore 
shown, adduced them as conclusive proof of 
such a doctrine. We think, however, when 
other passages, to be presented under anoth- 
er head, shall have been considered, it will 
yet more plainly appear that such a view is 
wholly untenable. 

It is evident that John's whole object, in 
these first eighteen verses, was to explain the 
character of Christ ; and in the fourteenth 
and eighteenth verses he makes the " Word " 
of the first verse " the only-begotten Son." 

We next invite attention to Prov. viii. 22- 
30. As these verses are much to the point, 
and are often referred to as proving the eter- 
nal existence of the Son, we quote them 
entire. " The Lord possessed me in the be- 
ginning of his way, before his works of old. 
I was-set up from everlasting, from the begin- 
ning, or ever the earth was. When there 
were no depths, I was brought forth ; when 
there were no fountains abounding with 
water. Before the mountains were settled, 
before the hills was I brought forth : while as 
yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 33 

nor the highest part of the dust of the world. 
When he prepared the heavens, I was there : 
when he set a compass upon the face of the 
depth : when he established the clouds above : 
when he strengthened the fountains of the 
deep : when he gave to the sea his decree, 
that the waters should not pass his command- 
ment : when he appointed the foundations of 
the earth : then I was by him, as one brought 
up with him : and I was daily his delight, re- 
joicing always before him." 

The person here represented as speaking 
is wisdom personified : but the language is 
generally, and we think rightly, referred to 
the Messiah. In this view, the passage is 
often regarded as proof of his existence as 
Son from eternity. The principal argument 
for that view is drawn from the use of the 
word " everlasting " in the clause, " I was set up 
from everlasting." We are told that the word 
thus translated means " eternal " or " eterni- 
ty," and that the corresponding Greek word in 
the New Testament has the same significa- 
tion. Well, admit this : they are mostly so 
translated in our version of both the Old and 
the New Testaments, especially in the mar- 
ginal readings. 



34 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

But it is well known that words often have 
meanings corresponding to the beings or 
objects to which they are applied. When 
the word refers to God, or any of his attri- 
butes, or to the spiritual life of the saints, it 
undoubtedly means eternal. In these cases, no 
limit or qualification is either expressed or im- 
plied. 

But, when it relates to hills (as in Gen. 
xlix. 26) or to the Levitical priesthood (as in 
Ex. xl. 15) or to mountains (as in Hab. iii. 6), 
it cannot mean eternal, but simply as long as 
the thing in question lasts. 

The verse last referred to ends thus: 
" His ways are everlasting." Here, in its 
application to God, the word denotes "eternal." 
Thus in this one verse it has two significa- 
tions. But let us look at the passage in 
Proverbs a little more closely. " The Lord 
[Jehovah] possessed me in the beginning of 
his way." Does not this suggest the idea of 
two beings, — a superior and an inferior, one 
possessing the other ? Does it not imply 
that the Father possessed the Son ? But we 
are taught that the Father and the Son are 
not only equal, but " the same in essence : " if 
so, it would be just as proper to say that the 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 35 

Son possessed the Father, as the Father the 
Son. 

The expression, "in the beginning of his 
way," like the similar language of Moses and 
John in the commencement of their narra- 
tives, evidently refers to the work of creation ; 
and it is worthy of note, that, more than a 
thousand years before John wrote, Solomon 
uses the same phraseology in reference to the 
same period, and also to the same person, — 
the Son of God. It was the period before 
the creation of the world ; and it is clear to 
us that he meant to say, " Jehovah possessed 
me before the world was created ; " as we have 
no doubt that this was the meaning of John, 
both in his Gospel and in his Epistle. With 
respect to Solomon, the twenty-third verse 
confirms this view : " I was set up from ever- 
lasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth 
was!' 

Here the word " everlasting " is explained, 
and its meaning fixed at a period before the 
creation. To prevent any misunderstanding, 
it is added, " or ever the earth was." The 
twenty-third verse is almost a repetition of the 
twenty-second, as to the time when the 
Father possessed him : it only adds, " I was 



36 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

set up," to show that his being had a com- 
mencement. Is it asked, " When ? " The an- 
swer is, " Or ever the earth was ; " i.e., before 
the creation of the world. 

Can any one read these two verses, and 
reasonably draw from them any other conclu- 
sion than the above ? The following verses 
seem to be confirmatory : verse 24, " When 
there were no depths, I was brought forth ; " 
verse 25, "Before the mountains, before the 
hills was I brought forth." If this " I " had 
reference to an eternal, divine Son, could 
such expressions as " I was set up," " I was 
brought forth," " Before the hills was I 
brought forth," be applicable to him ? How 
would they read if applied to the Deity, and 
by adding the word " eternity " ? for this must 
be their meaning if they apply to an eternal 
Son. Thus : " Jehovah possessed me from all 
eternity, before he began the creation ; " "I 
was set up from all eternity, before he began to 
create anything known or unknown;" "Be- 
fore the waters were created, from all eternity 
was I brought forth? All will at once see 
their inappropriateness. 

The other verses in the quotation from 
Proverbs are mostly confirmatory repetitions 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 37 

of those on which we have now commented. 
They refer to the time when the Son existed 
with the Father. This time is marked quite 
emphatically in the thirtieth verse, " Then 
I was by him, as one brought up with him : 
and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always 
before him." 

This word " then " points unmistakably to 
the period before described as " in the begin- 
ning of his way," "before his works of old," 
" from everlasting " (as that word is quali- 
fied), " from the beginning, or ever the earth 
was " (that is, before the creation, of which 
a sketch is given) ; and the whole text depicts 
a dutiful Son in intercourse with a loving 
Father, and harmonizes with all Christ's lan- 
guage in relation to his Father. 

Take now these nine verses together, and 
what do they say ? Is it not this ? — that the 
person described as speaking " was set up," 
" brought forth," or began his existence, be- 
fore the heavens and the earth were cre- 
ated. 

He " was daily his delight, rejoicing always 
before him ; " i.e., as we understand it, happy 
in his presence. 

It seems as if the Son of God here takes 

4 



38 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

special pains to prevent misunderstanding as 
to his existence and character. We say, as 
we did on the passages in John's Gospel and 
Epistle, Let the reader get the ideas which 
have been advanced clearly into his mind, 
whether he yet accepts them or not, and he 
will see how naturally the whole passage reads. 
There is but one word, " everlasting/' that 
seems to favor the idea of existence from 
eternity ; and that word is effectually limited. 
Yet our ablest theological writers are wont 
to adduce this passage to prove the eternal 
existence of the Son. We can account for 
this only on the power of preconceived opin- 
ion. 

Let us suppose the Son to have been a 
derived being, united to the Father, and to 
have attempted to convey to Solomon an idea 
of his origin and state before the creation : 
should we not expect him to say just what Solo- 
mon here wrote ? His union with the Father 
is not indeed so positively expressed as after 
his descent to earth ; yet the language is 
adapted to the purpose. Thus viewed, the 
passage makes good sense ; but we can see 
in it no good sense or fitness on the other 
scheme. We cannot conceive of God thus 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 39 

" possessed," " set up," " brought forth," the 
delight of Jehovah, and " rejoicing always be- 
fore him." 

To us, this must be another being, and in 
himself alone less than God. 

John v. 26 is also introduced as evidence of 
the eternity of the Son. It reads thus : " As 
the Father hath life in himself, so hath he 
given to the Son to have life in himself." It 
is argued, that, as the life of the Father is un- 
derived and eternal, the Son, having the same 
life, must also be eternal. 

We believe that the Son had eternal life, and 
could impart it to believers ; as he said, " I 
give unto them eternal life." But whence and 
how did he obtain it ? Was it inherent, unde- 
rived, in him ? The passage itself answers 
the question : " So hath he given to the Son to 
have life in himself." This declaration, there- 
fore, instead of proving the eternity of the Son, 
seems to prove quite the contrary. Certainly 
he had not eternal life until it was given him 
by the Father. 

It would be preposterous to say that God 
the Father gave to God the Son eternal life or 
any other attribute ; for, if the Son in himself 
was God, of the same essence as the Father, 



40 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

he would naturally have possessed it even as 
his Father. 

The question may arise, How could God im- 
part eternal life (life from all eternity) like his 
own ? We answer, In no other way than by 
union with himself. We say fearlessly, that 
God could impart underived existence to no 
being except by taking him into such a union 
with himself that the two became one, and the 
nature, powers and attributes of each (eternal 
life included) are possessed by the united 
one. 

How perfectly in harmony with this view 
are all the teachings of the Saviour as to the 
connection between the Father and himself ! 
" The Son can do nothing of himself [sepa- 
rately regarded], but what heseeth the Father 
do : for whatsoever things he doeth, these also 
doeth the Son likewise'' (John v. 19). "But 
of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no 
not the angels which are in heaven, neither 
the Son, but the Father" (Mark xiii. 32). 

This could not have been said of the Son if 
he had been in himself God as the Father was. 
Do not these statements fully imply that the 
Son, as a son only, was a distinct being, and 
inferior to the Father ? But when united to 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 41 

him, the very things which God the Father 
did, the same also did the Son ; and they were 
done on the same principle on which the crea- 
tion of the world is ascribed at one time to 
God, and at another to the Son. 

Just on this principle, as we think, were all 
God's works and those of Christ performed. 
Many transactions in the New Testament are 
attributed to God and to Christ. 

We will just glance at one more passage 
often confidently urged as evidence of the 
eternity of the Son, and then leave this side 
of the question. 

Heb. i. 8, "Thy throne, O God, is for ever 
and ever." In this chapter Paul is evidently 
endeavoring to show the Christian Jews the 
superiority of the Son of God above all other 
created beings. To do this, he quotes from 
several Psalms the declarations of the Father 
to or concerning the Son, all of which were 
spoken many years before the incarnation ; 
and some of them were addressed to him even 
before the creation. In every one of these 
quotations, if we carefully study them with 
their context, either in this chapter or in the 
Psalm from which they are taken, we shall 
find the Son, as such, in a subordinate charac- 



42 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

ter to his Father. We could go into an an- 
alysis of them, if needed. We may feel called 
upon to allude to some of them hereafter : at 
present we will only notice the one above ; 
" Thy throne, O God," &c. 

This passage, thus separately stated, is posi- 
tive. The Father here calls his Son " God." 
One might say, if he is God, he is eternal ; 
but, if we read the following verse, we shall 
find that the Father has anointed this Son 
whom he calls God, " above his fellows." 

This anointing undoubtedly had reference 
to the ceremony, in the Mosaic economy, of 
inducting the high priest, and sometimes 
kings and prophets, into office by anointing 
them with the holy oil. 

When they were thus anointed they were 
consecrated, and authorized to act in their re- 
spective offices ; and when utensils or other 
things were thus anointed they were set apart 
exclusively to holy purposes. 

Note, it is God's holy oil with which the 
Son is said to have been anointed. For the 
preparation of that oil, and the care with 
which it was guarded from being used for any 
common purpose, or imitated, the reader is 
referred to Ex. xxx: 23-33 inclusive. Does 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 43 

not this anointing most fitly emblematize the 
anointing of the Son ? When God took him 
into union with himself, did he not thus 
anoint him with his own spirit "without 
measure " ? And thus was he not " filled 
with all the fulness of the Godhead bodily " ? 
And, being thus spiritually anointed, he is 
properly inducted into the spiritual offices of 
priest, prophet, and king. And, possessing 
all that the Father had, which of course in- 
cluded all the divine attributes and power, was 
it not as proper that his Father should call 
him God, as that John, under the influence of 
the divine Spirit, should call him God ? Yes, 
he was God, not innately, but by union ; and 
it was right that his Father should so call him, 
and that John and Thomas should call him 
God ; and it would be right and just if all the 
inhabitants of the earth should so call him, 
and worship him, " as over all, God blessed 
forever." 

Other passages sometimes adduced as 
proofs of the eternal existence of Christ as 
Son, if closely examined on the principle of 
interpretation and reasoning herein adopted, 
will be found to prove only that Christ as Son 
existed before the creation. 



44 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

The idea, held to be taught by Scripture, 
that he existed as an eternal Son or eternal 
second person in the Godhead, we are com- 
pelled to say is wholly untenable. 

We cannot find a single passage from which, 
on strict examination, we can fairly draw such 
a conclusion. And if we shall show, as we 
think can plainly be done, that his existence 
as Son had a beginning, this, it would seem, 
ought to be a final settlement of the question. 

We proceed to the next consideration, 
namely, to show that Christ existed as a hu- 
man being before the creation of the world. 

In doing this we must examine his use of 
the pronouns if I " and " me," and other words 
by which he describes himself. In his general 
appearance, we suppose him to have been as 
other men. He was of the Hebrew nation 
and of the tribe of Judah. He could trace his 
genealogy as the other Jews. He had a legal 
father, a natural mother, brothers, and sisters, 
as others had. He was born of a woman, was 
a babe, nourished, and brought up as others ; 
was a boy, a lad, a young man, learned a trade, 
worked at it for a living, and became a man 
as others, except that in all these stages of life 
he was perfect and holy. 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 45 

If we are asked how we know that he was 
perfect and holy, our answer is, If he had not 
been so, if on any occasion he had deviated 
from perfect rectitude before God, — the 
almighty Father could not have said to him 
when he was about thirty years old, " This is 
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased ; " 
nor could he have been fitted to make an ac- 
ceptable atonement for man's sin. 

Our information of his early life is very 
meagre. When he was twelve years old he 
conversed with the rabbis and doctors in the 
temple on the great principles of God's king- 
dom, and astonished them by his answers ; and 
" he increased in wisdom and stature, and in 
favor with God and man." 

We learn nothing further of him until he 
was about thirty years of age, when he came 
down some sixty or seventy miles to his rela- 
tive John, the forerunner, to be baptized by 
him. 

As to what transpired with him during the 
intervening eighteen years, we are left to con- 
jecture ; but we have no reason to suppose 
that he manifested any divine power or 
claimed any divine authority. 

The nearest approach to this is his answer 



46 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

to his mother, when he was found in the tem- 
ple, " Wist ye not that I must be about my 
Father's business ? " Here he evidently claims 
God as his Father. 

Thus, up to his baptism, he was before the 
community as any other man who was strictly 
moral and devout ; and after this the only 
difference was that he devoted himself wholly 
to the spiritual and temporal good of the peo- 
ple, in his wonderful teachings and miracles, 
which, through the power of the Father, he 
performed ; for he says, " the Father that 
dwelleth in me, he doeth the works " (John xiv. 
10). It is not a divine Son, but the Father, 
whom he speaks of as dwelling in him. 

Therefore, in all his intercourse with the 
people, he was wont to use the pronouns re- 
ferring to himself as other men use them, and 
to make no reference to his connection with 
God except when he wished to bring this con- 
nection into view, as in the words, " I and my 
Father are one." 

No one supposes that he prayed as a divine 
Son ; yet the pronouns that he applies to him- 
self in his prayers are used just as on other 
ordinary occasions. Thus he says : " I have 
glorified thee on the earth, I have finished the 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 47 

work which thou gavest me to do." " O Father, 
glorify thou me " (John xvii. 4, 5). The pro- 
nouns " I " and " me " are here used in just 
the same sense as in the passages, " I have 
meat to eat that ye know not of" (John iv. 32), 
and " Have I been so long time with you, and 
yet hast thou not known me ? " 

In almost innumerable instances, Jesus uses 
the pronoun " I " in allusion merely to his 
humanity ; yet, as before hinted, he sometimes 
includes in it his divinity, as when he says, 
" I have power to lay it [life] down ; and I 
have power to take it again." He must here 
mean his human life ; and the " I " includes 
his divinity : for as a man he had no more 
power to take back his life than another man ; 
and Paul says, " God raised him from the 
dead " (Acts xiii. 30). 

All the writers of the New Testament, 
when treating of Christ in his ordinary inter- 
course with men, speak of him as a man ; but 
when divine manifestations appeared, their 
language was generally different. 

We might quote further on this point, but 
think it needless. In many incidents of his 
life, we see no signs of divinity; while in others 
we see little else than divinity. This all har- 



48 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

monizes perfectly when we remember that 
divinity and humanity are one in him. 

But we are straying from our subject ; and 
we return to show, more directly, that Christ 
was a human being in existence before the 
creation of the world. 

If this can be settled from the Scriptures 
as a fact, the way will be prepared for the es- 
tablishment of our other positions. To effect 
this, we may refer to some passages already 
quoted for another purpose. 

First. We take the position that the ex- 
pressions " begotten," " set up," " brought 
forth," " first-born," " first-begotten," " begin- 
ning of creation," &c, each and all, when applied 
to a being, naturally and necessarily convey the 
idea of a beginning of existence ; and that to 
endeavor to force some other meaning upon 
them, in support of any doctrine, is not to be 
countenanced in dealing with the Scriptures. 

All these expressions, and others of like im- 
port, are used by the sacred writers in refer- 
ence to the Lord Jesus Christ before his 
incarnation. Now, as commencement of ex- 
istence cannot be affirmed of deity or divin- 
ity, they must refer in some way to Christ as 
having had such commencement ; and since, 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 49 

as before seen, Christ did actually exist before 
the creation, while his body did not exist till 
about four thousand years afterwards, we are 
left to the alternative that the expressions 
above named refer to his human soul, if we 
admit, as most evangelical believers do, that 
he had such a soul. How he could make 
atonement for human souls without possessing 
one himself, is beyond our comprehension. 
On this last point much more might be said. 

In Ps. ii. 7, 8, it is thus written : " The 
Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son : 
this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me," 
&c. This is generally taken as an address of 
the Father to the Son. If this is a correct 
view (and we have not heard it questioned), 
we have the Father declaring to the Son his 
sonship, and referring to a period when it 
commenced, — " this day." Now other Scrip- 
tures, such as "in the beginning of his way," 
" before his works of old," " from the begin- 
ning, or ever the earth was " (Prov. viii. 22, 
23), show that the period marked by " this 
day " was before the creation. 

Since, then, this " Son " had a commence- 
ment of existence, and that commencement 
was before the creation, are we not shut up 
5 



50 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

to the conclusion that this begotten son of 
Jehovah was no less than the human soul of 
Christ ? Is there any thing in this unnatural, 
or that looks like an undue effort to make out 
a point ? 

Again : " The Word was made flesh, and 
dwelt among us ; and we beheld his glory, as 
of the only-begotten of the Father " (John i. 
14). This Word is allowed to be the same 
being to whom Jehovah said, " Thou art my 
Son : this day have I begotten thee." But if 
this be so, since John tells us that the Word 
was with God in the beginning, it follows that 
the expression used by Jehovah, " this day," 
must refer to the beginning spoken of by 
John. Hence we arrive at the same conclu- 
sion as above, viz., that Jehovah's Son, begot- 
ten at a certain period implied by the words 
" this day," could not have had eternal exis- 
tence, and was necessarily that human being, 
our " elder brother," to whom God said, " Let 
us make man in our likeness, after our image." 
Was he not that soul of Christ that came 
down from heaven, " was made flesh, and 
dwelt among men," of whom John says, " We 
beheld his glory, the glory as of the only- 
begotten of the Father " ? 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 5 I 

Observe now how John connects the 
"Word" with the "Son" of the Psalmist. 
Jehovah says, " Thou art my Son, this day 
have I begotten thee ; " and John says, " We 
beheld his glory, as of the only-begotten of the 
Father." 

See also Ps. lxxxix. 26, 27. " He shall say 
unto me, Thou art my Father, my God." 
Also, " I will make him my first-born," &c. 
Does this language seem applicable to God, 
speaking to a son of equal existence, powers, 
and attributes with himself? How could God 
the Father make an eternal God the Son his 
first-born ? Would not the Son have been 
the same as the Father ? We are aware that 
this is primarily spoken of David ; but it is 
generally understood as referring to the Mes- 
siah. 

Let these two verses follow that quoted in 
the second Psalm, and imagine it to be the 
language of the Almighty Father to a literally 
begotten Son, soon after he was brought into 
existence, and see how appropriately they 
would read : " Thou art my Son : this day 
have I begotten thee." " Ask of me, and I 
will give thee the heathen for thine inheri- 
tance, and the uttermost part of the earth for 



52 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

thy possession." " Thou shalt cry unto me, 
My Father, my God, the rock of my salvation ; 
also I will make thee my first-born, higher 
than the kings of the earth." 

The above well accords with all the lan- 
guage of the Father concerning the Son, es- 
pecially with the declaration, " This is my 
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." 

The being in this eighty-ninth Psalm is evi- 
dently the same to whom God said in the 
second Psalm, " Thou art my Son," &c, where, 
it was shown, a period was fixed when he was 
begotten. In this Psalm the Son is repre- 
sented as calling God his Father and his God, 
and is answered by God with a promise that 
he should be his first-born, and as such placed 
higher than the kings of the earth. 

It is alleged that the term " first-born " is 
here given as a kind of title or position by 
which the receiver comes to possess special 
advantages ; and that reference is made to the 
Mosaic ritual, where the first-born in several 
ways had superiority. But, it will be remem- 
bered, the first-born in that dispensation re- 
ceived the advantages conferred on him on 
the ground of his being the first-born son in 
the family : that fact gave him the pre-emi- 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 53 

nence. Thus Christ, as having been the first- 
born of the human family, has the pre-eminence 
over all the children of men. 

His prior existence gives him the pre- 
eminence. 

This well agrees with God's decree in the 
second Psalm, " Thou art my son : this day 
have I begotten thee : ask of me, and I will 
give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, 
and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy 
possession ; " and in the other Psalm, " I will 
make thee higher than the kings of the earth." 
Does he not receive the pre-eminence ? and 
does he not receive it on the ground of his 
being humanly the " first-born " or the " be- 
ginning " ? 

In Col. i. 15, Paul calls him the "first-born 
of every creature." What did Paul mean by 
that expression ? Would it not convey to an 
impartial mind that he was the first in the 
creation ? 

And when we find this so fully corroborated 
by other Scriptures, we are unable to attach 
to it any other meaning. If we are correct in 
so doing, what can this first-born be, other 
than the human soul of Jesus ? 

Once admit that the man Jesus, as to his 

5* 



54 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

soul, was literally "the only-begotten Son" 
(John iii. 16), "the first-born of every crea- 
ture," " the first-begotten " (Heb. i. 6), " the 
only-begotten of the Father," and was with him 
"before all things" (Col. i. 17), and by union 
with him (John x. 30) was clothed with divine 
attributes, and then all these and other pas- 
sages become clear and natural. 

The passages in John's Gospel having the 
same import are too numerous to mention. 
We will select a few of the most prominent 
ones, some of which seem, to us, to place the 
subject in such a light as to challenge contro- 
versy. 

" What and if ye shall see the Son of man 
ascend up where he was before ? " (John vi. 
62.) Let us look a moment at this expression, 
"the Son of Man." The title is applied in 
the New Testament to the Saviour more than 
forty times ; and, in all but two or three of 
them, Christ so calls himself. For the most 
part it refers to his humanity alone, either to 
the soul or the body, but more frequently to 
both. In a few instances it includes his 
divinity, as when he justifies his language to 
the palsied man : " But that ye may know 
that the Son of man hath power on earth to 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 55 

forgive sins " (Matt. ix. 6) ; and again, " The 
Son of man shall send forth his angels " (Matt, 
xiii. 41). These and some other passages show 
his divine power ; and he tells us from whom 
he received that power : " the Father that 
dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." 

With this thought in view, let us again 
read the passage, " What and if ye shall see 
the Son of man ascend up where he was be- 
fore ? " 

But, according to the common theory, when 
Christ spake these words there had never 
been a " Son of man " in heaven, but only a 
divine Son. If that had been the fact, why 
did not Christ say so ? Why did he not say, 
" What and if ye shall see the Son of God 
ascend " &c. ? That expression might have 
included both natures ; for the union of the 
divine Son with the man Jesus would have 
made the divine Son and the human Jesus one : 
then, if Christ had said, "If ye shall see the 
Son of God ascend up where he was before," 
it would have been proper ; for the soul and 
body, being united with the divine Son, must 
have ascended with him. But Christ did not 
so speak. His words were, " If ye shall see the 
Son of man ascend up where he was before!' 



56 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

As this name always included his humanity 
when applied to himself, does it not establish 
the theory beyond a question that his human- 
ity was in heaven before he was manifested on 
earth ? 

Let it be remembered that Christ's ques- 
tion at this time was in answer to the mur- 
murings of the disciples, who had said, " This 
is a hard saying : who can hear it ?■" " Does 
this offend you ? " says Christ. " What will 
you say if you see me ascend up where I was 
before I came upon earth ? " This seems to 
be the simple import of the text : but Christ 
fixes it more definitely ; and, that there might 
never be a mistake, he says "the Son of man" 
Did not Christ intend to convey to the disci- 
ples that it was this Son of man who should 
ascend, as really as he intended to convey to 
them that it was the Son of man who should 
be betrayed and crucified, when he informed 
them of his arrest and execution ? 

So also in John xvi. 28, " I came forth 
from the Father, and am come into the world ; 
again, I leave the world and go to the Father." 
Did not the disciples understand him to mean 
himself, as man, as he stood before them, 
when they answered (verse 29), "Lo, now 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 57 

speakest thou plainly, and speakest no prov- 
erb ; " " By this we believe that thou earnest 
forth from God " ? 

Did the disciples imagine there was a 
divine Son of God united with the man 
Jesus Christ, and that this divine Son was 
the being come forth from God, and was to 
return to God ? Did Christ intend they 
should so understand him ? Jesus adds (verse 
32), " ye shall be scattered, every man to his 
own, and shall leave me alone : and yet I am 
not alone, because the Father [not the divine 
Son] is with me." Do not the pronouns 
" me " and " I," in the above, refer exclusively 
to the man ? 

In John vi. 30, Jesus says, " I came down 
from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the 
will of him that sent me " : take this in con- 
nection with chap. v. 30, which reads thus : 
" As I hear, I judge : and my judgment is just ; 
because I seek not mine own will, but the will 
of the Father which hath sent me." As be- 
fore hinted, these verses show that there were 
two wills in heaven, the Father's and the 
Son's ; for he says, " I came down from heav- 
en, not to do mine own will!' 

Certainly, then, the Son had a will in heav- 



58 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

en before he came on earth ; and that will, al- 
though in harmony with, was not, the Father's 
will : for he came down to do, not the one, but 
the other. 

Now, if this "I" and "my" and "mine" 
refer to a divine Son, that Son must have 
had a will separate from his Father's. And 
if possessing a separate will, it follows he 
must have been a separate being ; for a 
divine Son, of the same essence with his 
Father, could not have a separate will. There- 
fore the Son who came down from heaven 
exclusively to do his Father's will could not 
have been a divine Son. 

We must keep in view it was Jesus Christ 
who " came down from heaven," for he says 
"/ came down from heaven." Clearly, 
then, it must have been that Son who could 
" do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the 
Father do " (John v. 19). 

What part of the complex Christ was it 
which came down from heaven ? His body 
had not yet been in heaven. Most assuredly, 
then, it must have been the human soul of 
Jesus. We have heard of but one way of 
treating these verses in John when supposed 
to apply to an eternal divine Son ; and that 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 59 

is, the assertion is made, "The subject is a 
mystery ! " 

The mystery to us is, how a thoughtful 
mind can be satisfied with such a statement, 
when the truth is so simple and clear. We 
know " secret things belong to the Lord our 
God : " we also know that those " things 
which are revealed belong to us and our 
children " (Deut. xxix. 29). 

If any doctrines of Christ are clearly re- 
vealed in the New Testament, we think that 
the existence of the human soul of Christ 
with his Father in heaven, before the creation, 
is one of them. 

One would suppose that the Saviour foresaw 
that an error would find its way into the 
Church, and mystify his glorious character, 
and that he was on his guard against the use 
of any words from which the idea of an eter- 
nal divine Son could be drawn ; for he con- 
stantly employs language inconsistent with 
such a doctrine. 

How often he repeats such expressions as, 
" I came from the Father," "came not of my- 
self," "was sent," "was given," &c. If we 
mistake not, there are between thirty and 
forty instances in the Evangelists, where 



60 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

Christ alludes to himself, or is spoken of, as 
having been "sent;" and in every one the 
idea that his Father sent him is implied or 
expressed. 

Now, all these irresistibly convey to the 
mind the idea of two beings, the one having 
power over the other. The mind as naturally 
embraces this view as the lungs inhale the 
atmosphere. How unnatural the idea that 
one person of the Godhead should send an- 
other person of the Godhead ! At the same 
time, these persons " are of the same essence, 
and equal in every divine perfection ; " conse- 
quently there could be but one will : and yet 
one sends the other ! How could such a 
divine Son say "I came not of myself"? 
There could not be two wills in Deity, if the 
divine Father and the divine Son possessed 
one and the same will (as they must, unless 
there were two wills in God, which none ad- 
mit). 

We rest this particular point of our subject 
here ; as we think we- have fully shown that 
there were two wills in heaven before the 
creation, and if two wills there must have 
been two beings, and that one of these beings 
could be no other than that human soul of 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 6 1 

Christ that came down and dwelt with men, 
as one of the human family. 

Would it not be just as proper to say that 
the Son sent the Father, who certainly was 
on earth ? — and, indeed, more proper, since 
Christ perpetually recognized the Father as 
dwelling in him and doing the works, but 
never mentioned an eternal Son. If there 
was such a Son, he must have remained 
in heaven ; for we hear nothing of him on 
earth. 

Again ; we assume that when Christ prayed, 
he prayed only as a man, a dependent human 
being. Although he was God by virtue of his 
union with the Father, yet his humanity was 
as dependent on the Father as if there had 
been no such union ; as he says, " The Son can 
do nothing of himself." Of course, then, in 
his prayers at least, the pronouns " /" and 
" me " can refer only to his humanity. 

Let us now glance at his memorable prayer 
recorded in the seventeenth chapter of John. 
In the first verse he prays, " Father, glorify 
thy Son, that thy Son may also glorify thee." 
Keeping in view that he prays as a man, and 
the man praying is the Son, does he, we ask, 



62 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

pray that the alleged eternal divine Son may 
be glorified ? Is it not, rather, that the human 
Son now praying may be glorified in the 
death, resurrection, and ascension which were 
just before him? Can it be difficult to deter- 
mine these questions ? 

Again, take the fourth and fifth verses, 
where, after saying " I have glorified thee on 
the earth," &c, implying that his whole aim, 
in his labors for the good of men, had been to 
exalt and glorify his Father, and that now, his 
work being finished, it only remained for him 
to suffer, rise from the dead, and give the last 
instructions to his disciples, he introduces 
this remarkable petition : " And now, O 
Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, 
with the glory which I had with thee before 
the world was." This petition, though short, 
is very comprehensive. It shows, first, that 
the man now praying was with his Father 
before the creation of the world ; secondly, 
that he was in a state of glory with his 
Father ; thirdly, that he had for a while been 
divested of much of that glory, having been 
engaged in completing a work which the 
Father had given him to do ; and, fourthly, 
that he now asks to be taken back into the 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 63 

glorious state which he enjoyed with the 
Father before his descent to earth. 

What more is there in the whole scheme of 
redemption ? We have Christ coming from 
heaven, taking a human body, performing 
works of mercy as one of the human family, 
in that state fulfilling the divine law to its 
penalty, rising from under the same, proclaim- 
ing salvation to all who shall believe on him, 
and then re-ascending to his native heaven : 
all this is directly or indirectly included in 
this short prayer. 

We think this to be no more than a natural 
unfolding of the thoughts it contains ; and we 
see not how any one can discover here the 
doctrine of an eternal divine Son, who laid 
aside his glory in order to dwell in the body 
of Jesus, as is commonly taught. 

But if the position is correct, that Christ 
prayed as a human being, then that doctrine, 
which seems to us to divest the prayer of all 
its beauty and pathos, at once disappears. 

How strangely it sounds to say the eternal 
God the Son prays to the eternal God the 
Father to be invested with the glory which he 
had with him before he came to earth ! But 
admit that the soul of the man praying had 



64 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

been in heaven, in a state of union and glory 
with the Father, before his appearance " in the 
form of a servant" on earth, and the prayer 
at once becomes intelligible, and harmonious 
with the teachings of Christ respecting him- 
self. 

See also the twenty-fourth verse, where 
Christ says, " For thou lovedst me before the 
foundation of the world ;" a passage which 
may, we are aware, be explained in the same 
way as those which speak of believers as 
" chosen in Christ before the foundation of 
the world." 

But it is more simple and natural to con- 
nect it with the prayer in the fifth verse. We 
should like to linger on this prayer, and to 
comment on some of its other expressions ; 
but it is not necessary. 

It may be said of it as a whole, as was 
said on verse 5, that, from beginning to 
end, it shows, as clearly as words can, an in- 
ferior being addressing a superior, a loving 
Father, on whom the suppliant wholly de- 
pends. If this be not the meaning, we frank- 
ly confess ourselves unable to understand it. 
Let the reader remember, that, in deciding 
the question whether this is an eternal Son 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 65 

who prays through the humanity of Jesus, or 
whether it is the man Jesus himself who prays 
to his Father, we really decide the question as 
to the reality of an eternal Son ; for the be- 
ing who prays is the one who was in glory 
with the Father before the world was. 

What could it be, then, that is meant, other 
than the soul of Christ ? 

But it may be said, " How could a created 
being be so united to the eternal God that 
the two should become one ? " We answer, 
" We cannot tell." It will then be said, " Here, 
then, is a mystery." Most assuredly there is ; 
but it is not a greater mystery that the derived 
Son should be united to God his Father, than 
that the man Jesus should be united to God 
the eternal Son, according to the general 
doctrine of the Church. 

But this is not our only answer. It was 
God's work. We do not pretend to explain 
or understand the manner of God's doings 
further than they are revealed. 

We have more than once alluded to the 
union of the human soul and body as an illus- 
tration of that celestial union ; and we cannot 
do better. 

We know, from our own consciousness, 



66 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

that the human soul and body are one ; and 
we know the begotten Son and his Father are 
one, because Christ and the apostles have 
declared it. We speak and act in the one 
case as concerning an acknowledged fact: so 
will we speak and act in the other. 

Before leaving this point of Christ's being 
with his Father prior to the incarnation, we 
wish to call attention to one of the twenty ap- 
pellations or descriptions which Christ applies 
to himself in his messages to the seven 
churches of Asia, contained in the second 
and third chapters of the Revelation. Each 
has something applicable to himself: many 
refer to his first appearance to John on the 
island. 

Read concerning his appearance, and the 
further narration in Rev. i. 14-18. It will be 
seen that the person spoken of is " he that 
liveth and was dead!' This clause seems to 
be thrown in that John should not mistake 
the person, that it was truly Jesus of Naz- 
areth. John says of him in the thirteenth 
verse that " he was like unto the Son of man." 
No one doubts that this person was Jesus 
Christ, " who had all power given to him in 
heaven and in earth ; " and in these presenta- 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 6? 

tions and messages, he shows how he would 
use that power. 

In one, and the last, of these descriptions, 
he calls himself " the beginning of the crea- 
tion of God." 

We have endeavored to show under an- 
other head (see page 2) who this being was 
with whom God began his creation. His ap- 
pearance to John at firsthand all the descriptions 
and representations that follow, go to establish 
the fact that it was Christ, as a man, who met 
and conversed with John ; and we believe that 
it was the man Jesus, and his angels, who made 
all the communications to John on the island. 

Indeed, we do not remember to have heard 
it even hinted from any source, that the eternal 
divine Son was with John on that occasion. 

If, then, it was the man Jesus whom John 
saw in such majesty, it must have been the 
same who was " the beginning of the creation 
of God ; " therefore as a man he must have 
been with his Father before the creation of 
the world. 

Advancing now to another point, we hope 
to show to the satisfaction of every candid 
mind, that the divinity of the Lord Jesus 
Christ consists in the union of his humanity 



68 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

with the eternal God his Father, and not, as 
is generally claimed, with an eternal divine 
Son. 

We begin by renewing the assertion, that, 
in all Christ's teachings as to his divine na- 
ture, there is not the first instance of so much 
as an allusion to a connection with a divine 
Son, nor even the most indirect hint of the 
existence of such a Son. 

On the contrary, whenever he refers to his 
divine nature and power, he attributes it to 
his Father alone. The passages are too nu- 
merous to quote, the Evangelists, especially 
John, being full of them. We select a few of 
the more prominent, some of which have been 
previously introduced. John xiv. 7 : "If ye 
had known me, ye should have known my 
Father also : and from henceforth ye know 
him, and have seen him." 

How had the disciples seen the Father? 
Jesus tells us, " The works that I do in my 
Father's name, they bear witness of me." He 
does not say "in the divine Son's name," 
which he would, doubtless, have said if he 
had been united to such a Son, and wrought 
by his power. 

The disciples had seen the Father in him, 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 69 

in the divine works which he did, just as John 
had " heard, seen, and handled the word of 
life," and just as we should say of a neighbor, 
" I saw Mr. A.," when we had seen only the 
body : the soul, the real man, we had not 
seen. In the same sense Jesus says, " He 
that seeth me seeth him that sent me " (John 
xii. 45), and he tells us many times who it was 
that sent him. 

In answer to the request of Philip, to show 
them the Father, he expresses surprise, that, 
after all they had seen of his divine works, 
and his repeated assertions of his inability to 
do them of himself, and that he did them all 
by his Father, they should still be ignorant of 
his true character ; and he further assures 
them (chap. xiv. 9-1 1) that it was by union 
with the Father that all his wonderful works 
were performed. 

But, as he was " in the Father and the 
Father in him," and " he and the Father were 
one " (that is, one by the union of the two), 
there belonged to him the nature and the 
powers of each ; and he could do the works of 
both the Father and the human Son. 

Accordingly he says (John x. 37), " If I do 
not the works of my Father, believe me not." 



70 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

He acknowledges that his claim to be in union 
with his Father is not entitled to be received 
on his bare statement, but needs to be proved 
by other evidence ; therefore he says, " The 
works that I do in my Father's name, they 
bear witness of me." 

Other teachings of his had their evidence 
largely in themselves ; but this claim of a 
special union with the Father needed the fur- 
ther evidence of his divine works. 

Thus we have in Jesus Christ the God- 
man, or " God with us," in the clearest possible 
sense. In this way ak>ne does he assert for 
himself divine power and authority, attrib- 
uting all to his Father, the one supreme God. 

Where, then, again we ask, is there the 
slightest ground for imagining an eternal 
Son between God the Father and the man 
Jesus thus conversing with the disciples ? 
Had there been such a Son, must he not have 
known it ? And, if he knew it, would he not 
have made some allusion to it, that the Church 
might not have been left for ages to imagina- 
tion on the subject ? He came to instruct in 
the things of the kingdom of heaven, as well 
as to save the souls of men. 

If, therefore, the doctrine of an eternal 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 7 1 

Son of God, held to be so fundamental in the 
economy of salvation, be true, we feel that it 
detracts from the integrity of the blessed 
Saviour, that, in all his teachings in the course 
of his ministry, he should not give so much as 
one hint of it to his disciples. 

Let us look now, for a moment, at the 
Scriptures thus far employed in our argument, 
with perhaps a few others, by way, mainly, of 
recapitulation. 

The following, we believe, are generally 
admitted to refer to Jesus Christ : he was 
" the beginning of the creation of God ;" " he 
was before all things ; " he was " in the begin- 
ning ;" he " was possessed of Jehovah in 
the beginning of his way ; " he " was set up 
from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever 
the earth was." 

He was united with God in the creation of 
the world : for " God created the heavens and 
the earth ; " and " the Son made all things, 
visible and invisible ; " and " by him God made 
the worlds." He was with God in the crea- 
tion of man. He left heaven, and came to the 
earth; for " he came forth from the Father, and 
came into the world." He was sent into the 



72 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

world by his Father. He was sent to do a 
certain work. 

While performing his works on earth, he 
speaks to his disciples of his " ascending up 
where he was before." He says he "knows 
Him who sent him, for he was from him." 

Having established the fact of his union 
with his Father, he now prays to be reinstated 
in the exalted condition which he necessarily 
laid aside to dwell with men on the earth. 
And, having fulfilled in the flesh all the 
divine requirements, in spirit, word, and deed, 
he then, on the cross, makes his last public 
proclamation, which was to all the world, u It 
is finished." 

We have thus far examined the Scriptures 
mainly relied on to prove the existence of an 
eternal Son of God, and called attention to 
their simple, literal import. We think we 
may challenge any one to say if we have 
sought to pervert them, or draw from a single 
passage an unwarranted meaning. 

We have also endeavored to show, from the 
Saviour's own teachings, in what his divine 
nature and power to work miracles consisted. 

It may be said that we set aside the funda- 



SONSHTP OF CHRIST. 73 

mental doctrine of the divinity of the Son of 
God, and reduce him to a mere man. Con- 
fessedly, we do make the Son of God a man ; 
but we recognize him also, in the highest sense, 
as God, by his union with God, so that he and 
his Father are one. 

We have endeavored to be explicit on this 
point, believing this doctrine to lie at the 
basis of salvation through the atonement of 
Christ ; for, without this union of God with 
man, we think there could be no atonement. 

Do we make the Son of man less divine by 
believing his own words, that his divinity is 
of his Father, than we should by taking the 
words of men, who say it consisted in a union 
with a God the Son ? 

He tells us his divinity is of the Father : 
men tell us it is of a divine Son. 

We believe that we have shown that the 
Lord Jesus Christ is as essentially divine as 
he is essentially human ; that he possessed 
three natures, — first, that of God the Father, 
the divine nature ; second, the human soul, the 
human immortal nature ; third, the body, 
the material nature, — these three united in 
one. The natural eye could see only one ; 
but the other two were really the acting power 
to perform the work through the body. 



74 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

It is said, again, that these views differ 
little from those of the old Arians. 

We admit that there is a point of resem- 
blance between our doctrine and that of the 
Arians, viz., the impossibility of a Father 
and a Son existing co-eternally. 

Arianism, it is well known, took its rise 
from the address of Bishop Alexander to his 
presbyters and inferior clergy, wherein he 
asserts that the Son is co-eternal, co-equal, 
and co-essential with the Father. 

To this statement Arius took exception, 
saying that there could not be a Father and a 
Son of co-eval existence. Alexander strenu- 
ously maintained his position, as it had long 
been the general doctrine of the Church ; and 
most of the bishops and presbyters went 
with him. Arius as firmly kept his ground, 
that it is impossible that the Son should be 
co-eternal with his Father. Thus the divi- 
sion in the Church commenced. Each party 
had its adherents. 

So far as we have been able to learn, Arius, 
before this controversy arose, stood as well in 
the church for piety and zeal as others of his 
order. At first he did not deny the divinity 
of the Son, but acknowledged him as the 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. 75 

second person in the Godhead. But the 
Arians soon saw that they must either give 
up the doctrine of the Son's divinity, or 
admit his co-eternity with the Father ; for, 
if he was not thus co-eternal, he could not be 
inherently divine : and they chose to surren- 
der the idea of his divinity. 

As, however, the evidence that he existed 
before the creation of the world, and took 
part in that creation, was too strong to be 
denied, they called him the first and highest 
of all created beings. 

To trace the subsequent history of Arian- 
ism, with its various parties and gross errors, 
till it became virtually extinct, is foreign to 
our purpose. 

Alexander's party, which was the Trinita- 
rian, saw an inexplicable difficulty in their 
doctrine of a trinity in the Godhead. The 
divinity of the Son was too clearly taught in 
the Bible for them to think of relinquishing 
that. On it also rested their hopes of salva- 
tion. 

But to call the Spn divine when he was not 
God in the highest sense, was to them a con- 
tradiction ; and, if he was God in this sense, 
he must, they thought, have existed from eter- 



j6 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

nity. How a Father and a Son could be each 
from eternity, they could not explain ; and con- 
sequently, as it was a matter relating to the 
Divine existence, they took refuge in the con- 
clusion that it was a mystery. 

Council after council was called, in nearly 
every one of which this subject was discussed, 
and often at much length, until, finally, it was 
settled according to the Athanasian Creed, 
which teaches that the Father is God, the 
Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, and 
yet the three Persons are but one God. 

How the personal Father, the personal 
Son, and the personal Holy Ghost could 
exist as one God, was left a mystery. It be- 
came, however, the doctrine of the Church, 
and has so continued down to the present 
day. Hundreds of Biblical students have 
written on this doctrine ; but no one has ex- 
plained it. 

The exact date of its introduction we can- 
not give ; but we hear Eusebius, who was 
bishop of Caesarea early in the fourth century, 
say that " he was early taught it while a cate- 
chumen, and also by his predecessors." Is not 
this a tacit confession that he did not receive 
it from the teachings of Christ or his apostles ? 

Doubtless millions of people now on earth 



SONSHIP OF CHRIST. JJ 

can say with Eusebius, that " they were early 
taught it ; " but can any believer in the doc- 
trine say that it was taught him from the 
Holy Scriptures ? 

The difficulty with both Alexander and 
Arius, and, we think, their great error, lay in 
supposing, in common with their predecessors, 
that the humanity of Christ, including soul and 
body, took its origin with the babe in Bethle- 
hem. Not doubting that this was the fact, 
each framed his theory accordingly. 

Hence, the Arians, while exalting him as 
a creature, denied that he was God. The 
Trinitarians, unable to give up the idea of his 
proper divinity, maintained that he was the 
Son of God from all eternity. Thus arose the 
doctrine of his eternal generation. 

Now, had the church-doctors of those times 
carefully studied the words of Jesus, and the 
writings of John and Paul, on this subject, 
instead of relying on their teachers and prede- 
cessors, we think they would have found, 
in the pre-existence of the human soul of 
Christ, an intermediate point of view, which 
would have saved them from these conflicting 
theories. 

The Trinitarian would have seen that the 



yS BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

Son, begotten " before the world was," but 
not from eternity, could be truly God by 
union with his Father. 

The Arian, too, would have learned that it 
was possible for him to maintain that the 
Son is a created and derived being, without 
making it necessary to deny his proper divin- 
ity. 

So far as Arius asserts the strict unity 
of God, the impossibility of a Son being 
co-eternal with his Father, and his conse- 
quently derived existence, it will be seen that 
our views agree. But, when he denies 
that the Son is essentially divine as God is 
divine, we must leave him, and " walk no more 
with him ; " for Christ says, " I and my 
Father are one." 

Also when the Trinitarian affirms that the 
Son or Logos is God, and possesses all 
divine attributes, we join heart and hand with 
him ; and differ only when he teaches that 
the Son was co-existent with the Fa- 
ther, by " eternal generation," and was in- 
herently divine. John the Baptist says, 
" God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto 
him." 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 79 

THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

The views that have now been advanced 
of the Son of God, it will be seen, are in con- 
flict with the doctrine of an eternal Trinity. 
If, as we have endeavored to show, there was 
no eternal Son, there was no " second person 
in an eternal Trinity." 

But we will proceed to consider the Trinity 
of which the New Testament speaks, and, in 
connection, the subject of the Personality of 
the Holy Spirit. 

That there are three distinct personalities 
or agents in the economy of grace, the Scrip- 
tures clearly affirm, each having his appro- 
priate sphere in man's salvation ; and these 
three are, most emphatically, one. The two 
distinct persons, Father and Son, have been 
already considered, and their unity : we 
come now to the personality of the Holy 
Spirit, called by Jesus " the Comforter." 

At the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem, 
Jesus made this declaration : " He that believ- 
eth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of 
his belly shall flow rivers of living water." 
John adds, " But this spake he of the Spirit, 
which they that believe on him should receive ; 



80 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because 
that Jesus was not yet glorified " (John vii. 
38, 39). This he said in accordance with 
Christ's words in his last address* to the disci- 
ples, where he declared, " It is expedient for 
you that I go away : for, if I go not away, the 
Comforter will not come unto you ; but, if I 
depart, I will send him unto you " (John xvi. 
7). Here we have the testimony of Christ 
and John, that, before Christ's ascension, the 
Comforter or Holy Ghost had not come ; 
and each gives the same reason, viz., because 
Jesus had not ascended, or was not yet glori- 
fied. 

But, notwithstanding these declarations, we 
find, both in the Old Testament and the New, 
various works and manifestations attributed to 
the Holy Ghost which occurred before Christ 
entered upon his ministry. 

Even in the account of the creation, it is 
said, " The Spirit of God moved upon the face 
of the waters ; " again, " The Spirit of God 
came upon Balaam," also "upon Saul," and 
upon many others. In the New Testament 
in particular, various works in both the former 
and later times are ascribed to the " Holy 
Ghost." " David said by the Holy Ghost, The 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 8 1 

Lord said unto my Lord," &c. (Mark xii. 
36). " Holy men spake as they were moved 
by the Holy Ghost" (2 Peter, i. 21). The 
angel said to Mary, " The Holy Ghost shall 
come upon thee ; " and when she visited her 
cousin, and told her what the angel had an- 
nounced, " Elizabeth was filled with the Holy 
Ghost." When John the Baptist was born, 
" his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy 
Ghost." " It was revealed to Simeon by the 
Holy Ghost, that he should not see death until 
he had seen the Lord's Christ." " The Holy 
Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a 
dove," upon Christ at his baptism. "And 
Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, returned 
into Galilee." 

These and other acts, as just observed, are 
ascribed to the divine Spirit before Christ and 
John taught that the Holy Spirit had not yet 
come. 

Now, what were all the acts of the Spirit ? 
What else were they than God communicating 
(through the begotten Son) his will to men ? 
His general way of making known his will was 
through the agency of what is called his Spirit. 
There were, however, other ways. It is often 
said, " The Lord spake : " whether using the 



82 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

human voice or some other instrumentality, 
we do not decide. 

As, however, the " worlds were made " 
through the begotten human Son, we cannot 
see why he should not speak words through 
him ; and it would seem that God did some- 
times speak with a human voice. He " called 
unto Adam, and said, Where art thou ? " 
and, " Who told thee that thou wast naked ? " 
likewise to Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, 
Moses, and others. We see no good reason 
to doubt that, in these cases, a human voice 
was used ; and, indeed, we are told that on one 
occasion God did use a voice. Ex. xix. 19: 
" Moses spake ; and God answered him by a 
voice." 

Then, also, there were divine messages by 
angels, by dreams, signs, visions, impressions, 
&c. Can any one discover a personality of 
the Holy Spirit in these divine communica- 
tions ? 

The only personality we can discover in any 
or all of them is God the Father communicat- 
ing to man through and by his begotten Son, 
on the same principle that he created the 
world through him. 

What is there in all the Biblical history, 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 83 

from the creation down to the baptism of 
Christ, that requires a third person in the God- 
head ? If there is any thing, we fail to see it. 
There is the Eternal God, certainly potent to 
do all things ; and there is the begotten Son, 
empowered with all the fulness of God, and 
by whom God " made the worlds." Is it not 
reasonable to suppose he would take care of 
and govern the same on similar principles ? 

The New-Testament writers do, indeed, 
attribute many things to the Holy Spirit ; but 
what was this Spirit before Christ's ascension? 
Christ and John assure us that, as a person, 
the Holy Spirit did not then exist, at least as 
he existed after that event. But before this 
time, what other, as before said, was the Spirit 
than the Divine influence, — God working in 
men, and prompting them, through the begot- 
ten Son, to do or declare his will ? We see, 
as yet, as little reason for making a person of 
this influence, as for making a person of any 
act of one man done to another. If one man 
by a blow kills another, it would be a strange 
impropriety to speak of this blow as a distinct, 
acting person ; and so of the acts ascribed to 
God's Spirit. We see, therefore, no necessity 
and no propriety in supposing a third person 



84 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

in any or all the acts ascribed to the Spirit, 
until we have authority for so doing from 
Christ. 

When, however, Christ was baptized, and 
began his public ministry, then began a new, 
more simple, and visible mode of divine com- 
munication. All the former outward ways 
now cease. Even the influence of the Spirit 
is now bestowed only through the man 
Jesus. He is now not only the spiritual 
(as before), but also the visible, channel of di- 
vine communication. Why should he not be ? 
The spiritual days-man he had been, ever 
since man was on earth. Now, furnished 
with a body, through its organs he can talk 
with men as men talk with one another ; and, 
as he is one with the Father, God through 
him can communicate orally, familiarly, and in 
sympathy with man. Wonderful provision ! 

For a moment let us contemplate Christ 
talking to and with men as another man ; and, 
being the complex person we have represented 
him, how naturally and appropriately such 
sentences as the following fall from his lips ! — 
" My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent 
me " (John vii. 16). Here we must see Christ 
was speaking exclusively as a man ; for the 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 85 

expressions "my" "mine" and "me" could 
not include a divine Son, for reasons before 
shown. 

But an entirely dependent human being, as 
Jesus frequently declared himself to be, could 
say so with propriety ; for he received his doc- 
trine from his Father. He continues (v. 17), 
" If any man will do his will, he shall know of 
the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether 
I speak of myself." 

What this doctrine was, he tells us in John 
vi. 40 : " Every one that seeth the Son, and 
believeth on him, may have everlasting life." 
This is the doctrine he ever preached, until he 
was nailed to the cross. 

We might thus continue, and fill a small 
volume in showing that Christ as a man, dur- 
ing the three and a half years of his ministry, 
was the sole organ of divine communication 
between God and the human family. The 
Holy Spirit was given to the apostles only 
through him. The Son, though in the flesh, 
was still, as from the beginning he had been, 
the medium of communication between God 
and man : the only difference is, he now has a 
human body, through which the communica- 
tion is more direct and familiar. 



86 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

Thus the writer to the Hebrews says (i. I, 
2), " God, who at sundry times and in divers 
manners spake in time past unto the fathers 
by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken 
unto us by his Son. Remember what has 
been said, that in all his dealings with man, 
God spoke and acted solely through his Son ; 
these verses further show that the visible 
person of the Son took the place of all the 
previous outward means of the divine com- 
munication. 

But this relation of Christ to men could be 
but temporary. He came into the world to be 
more than a mere teacher. He was, further, 
to do the will of God in the flesh, obeying not 
only all the ritual and moral precepts, but 
fulfilling also the divine mandate in relation 
to his brother man on earth, whom he saw 
lost in sin, and under sentence of both tempo- 
ral and spiritual death. Man had disinherited 
himself of eternal life, and been consequently 
forbidden access to its emblem, the tree of 
life. Cast out of Paradise, it had become his 
doom, after a few years of anxiety and toil, 
to take up his abode with him whose sugges- 
tions he had adopted instead of obeying his 
Maker's commands. 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 87 

The Son saw all this, and gave himself to 
the appointed work of providing redemption 
for his lost brother and his descendants. He 
met fully the demands laid upon him ; bore, 
both in soul and body, the heavy burden of 
man's sin and condemnation ; and then his 
soul, now united with a glorified body, re-as- 
cended to his native heaven. Who now is to 
be the agent of divine communication ? 

Before Christ's baptism there were, as we 
have seen, many ways of conveying the Divine 
will. During his ministry he was the only 
channel, or, to use his own words, " the way." 
But, now that he has returned into heaven, 
who is to bring us the knowledge of divine 
things ? 

In answering this question, we give our 
understanding of the personality of the Spirit 
or the third person in the Trinity. We draw 
our views chiefly from the address of Christ 
to the apostles at the last passover (John 
xiv. -xvi.) 

In this address, spoken after the institution 
of the Supper, he seeks to prepare them for 
the dark and discouraging scene which, un- 
consciously to them, was just before them, 
when all their hopes and expectations were 



S5 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

to be apparently overthrown. He explains 
to them his character as God and man, to 
show by what power and authority he had 
performed his superhuman works, and tells 
them, that, though he is to leave them, he 
will yet extend to them a watchful care 
through one whom he calls " the Comforter." 

While, however, the name is new, the acting 
and the power would be still, as heretofore, 
that of the Father in union with himself. By 
this agency was spiritual instruction to be 
given in all coming time. In order that they 
and all future disciples might have a more dis- 
tinct and palpable object before their minds 
than they could have otherwise, this divine 
spiritual power he personifies, — " the Com- 
forter." 

Heretofore, the name applied to this divine 
influence had been " the Spirit of God " (Gen. 
i. 2), " the good Spirit " (Neh. ix. 20), " Spirit 
of the prophets" (Neh. ix. 30), "the divine 
Spirit," " Thy Spirit," " Holy Ghost," &c, as 
before shown. All these expressions, and 
others of like import, could refer to but one 
influence ; and that was God acting or moving, 
without any authorized personality of those 
movements. 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 89 

But now when Christ, through whom God 
acted visibly, was to be withdrawn, there 
needed to be prominently before the minds 
of the disciples, in Christ's place, some other 
spiritual instructor, a distinct personal agent. 
Therefore he says, " I will pray the Father ; 
and he shall give you another Comforter." 
Does he mean another being like himself? 
■ — one who could go in and out with them, as 
he had done ? No ; but he personifies, in the 
use of this term, the new guiding power which 
they were to receive. With the apostles the 
wish would naturally arise, to learn something 
more about this promised Helper ; and, that 
Christ might not leave them in too much 
doubt, he says, " I will come unto you," teach- 
ing them that in the Comforter he somehow 
includes himself. Throughout this address, 
he impresses upon them the idea, that hence- 
forward the Comforter alone is to give instruc- 
tion in heavenly things. 

To fix this more indelibly upon their minds 
and the minds of all future disciples, he con- 
descended to present this personified agent to 
their physical senses. This divine agent was 
first manifested as a " rushing mighty wind!' 
Mark how this is worded. Acts ii. 23 : 

8* 



90 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

" Suddenly there came a sound from heaven, 
as of a rushing mighty wind ; and it filled all 
the house where they were sitting." Their 
ears were therefore saluted by the approach 
of this divine agent in his new, person- 
ified character. He was next manifested 
to another of their senses : " There appeared 
unto them cloven tongues like as of fire ; and 
it sat upon each of them." Why now these 
peculiar manifestations ? Was it not for a 
similar purpose to that designed at Christ's 
baptism ? Were not the voice and the dove 
on that occasion intended to call the minds 
of the pious off from the various ways of 
divine communication which had prevailed up 
to that time and fix them on the person now- 
proclaimed to be the Son of God ? 

And so was not this divine display on the 
day of Pentecost meant to call the disciples 
away from the earthly Jesus, on whom they 
had so much relied, to the invisible Teacher, 
that personified agent, thereafter to be the 
sole divine instructor ? 

The result of this manifestation, was that 
" They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, 
and began to speak with other tongues, as the 
Spirit gave them utterance!" 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 9 1 

In addition to powers before bestowed, they 
now receive the new power of readily speaking 
languages of which they before knew nothing. 

To the inquiry, who was this agent thus 
manifested personally and by expressive sym- 
bols, the common answer of the Church would 
be, " It was the Holy Spirit, — the third person 
in the divine Trinity." That the same divine 
influence was imparted now which had been 
bestowed before, and ascribed to the Holy 
Ghost," " Spirit of God," &c, there can be no 
question. 

But we cannot see that this divine influence 
had ever before been personified, or mani- 
fested as a person. 

If we accept a solitary apparent exception, 
in the case of Christ's baptism, in the appear- 
ance of the dove, we should bear in mind 
that this was only temporary, for a special 
purpose. If such had not been the fact, how 
could Jesus call him " another Comforter?" 
The higher position, also, which this agent 
henceforward assumes justifies this peculiar 
designation. He now becomes the sole spir- 
itual teacher, and is the third witness in 
heaven, but the first on earth, as we shall see 
hereafter. 



92 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

That there might be no misunderstanding 
as to the " Comforter " whom he now intro- 
duces to his disciples, he gives them a full 
and complete explanation of his person, 
character, office, and works, set forth in the 
memorable address to which we have 
alluded. It is important that due attention 
be given to these instructions, as they are the 
only information of the kind that we have of 
this personage, except what may be gathered 
from his works. And, as these instructions are 
in detached paragraphs in the above address, 
they may be better understood if we view them 
connectedly, as follows, — John xiv. 16: "I will 
pray the Father, and he shall give you another 
Comforter, that he may abide with you forever." 
Verse 17: "Even the Spirit of truth, whom 
the world cannot receive, because it seeth him 
not, neither knoweth him : but ye know him ; 
for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." 
Verse 18 : "I will not leave you comfortless: 
I will come to you." Verse 23 : "If a 
man love me, he will keep my words : and my 
Father will love him, and we will come unto 
him, and make our abode with him! 1 Verse 25 : 
" These things have I spoken unto you, being 
yet present with you." Verse 26 : " but the 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 93 

Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom 
the Father will send in my name, he shall 
teach you all things, and bring all things to 
your remembrance, whatsoever I have said 
unto you." 

Chap. xv. 26: " But when the Comforter is 
come, whom I will send unto yon from the 
Father, even the Spirit of truth, which pro- 
ceeded from the Father, he shall testify of 
me." 

Chap. xvi. 7 : " I tell you the truth : it is 
expedient for you that I go away ; for if I go 
not away, the Comforter will not come unto 
you ; but if I depart, / will send him tmto your 
Verse 8 : " And when he is come, he will re- 
prove [or convince] the world of sin, and of 
righteousness, and of judgment." Verse 9 : 
" Of sin, because they believe not on me." 
Verse 10 : " Of righteousness, because I go to 
my Father, and ye see me no more." Verse 
11: "Of judgment, because the prince of this 
world is judged." Verse 12: "I have many 
things to say unto you ; but ye cannot bear 
them now." Verse 13: " Howbeit, when ke y 
the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you 
into all truth : for he shall not speak of him- 
self; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall 



94 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

he speak ; and he will show you things to 
come." Verse 14: " He shall glorify me: for 
he shall receive of mine, and shall show it 
unto you." Verse 15: "All things that the 
Father hath are mine : therefore said I, that he 
shall take of mine, and shall show it unto 
you." 

All this is what Christ tells us of the Com- 
forter. He must therefore possess all the 
attributes of the Deity ; for in his coming the 
Father comes. He must possess the nature, 
sympathies, and rational powers of man ; for 
in the Comforter's coming, Jesus says re- 
peatedly he would come. Therefore, in the 
coming of the Comforter, there is really the 
coming of both the Father and the Son. 
The Comforter must, then, be both the Father 
and the Son acting jointly. 

Thus, we see, the Father and the Son, 
jointly acting, constitute the Comforter ; and 
this united operation of Father and Son is 
by the Saviour personified, and thus consti- 
tutes a person, because he is to be " another" 
agent of divine communication, in the place of 
all former ones, — especially of that visible 
one, the Son, whose visibility was now to 
cease. 



THE TRINITY AND THE, HOLY SPIRIT. g$ 

Further, this agent would be empowered to 
communicate what no former agency had 
lone, or could do in their circumstances. 
His prerogative would be to teach the things 
of Christ ; that is, his character, and, more 
especially, the way of salvation through his 
death and resurrection. 

Another reason, and not the least, for per- 
sonifying this new agency was, that this Com- 
forter would be in all after ages the only acting 
divine Teacher, as before stated. 

And now, what a Person is brought to view 
in this Comforter ! The God of the universe, 
the Eternal and the Almighty, in union with 
the begotten Son, under this new name, or 
under the name of the Holy Ghost or the divine 
Spirit (the particular name is immaterial), 
comes and makes his abode with men for- 
ever, expressly to teach them the things of his 
kingdom. 

How fitly is this new phase of spiritual in- 
struction introduced ! — by a " sound from 
heaven as of a rushing, mighty wind," and by 
" cloven tongues as of fire." Now the Church 
takes an advance such as she had never 
taken before. For more than four thousand 
years she had been creeping in her infancy, 



g6 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

through the mist of figure, type, and emblem, 
until their fulfilment in the Messiah. 

During the ministry of John the Baptist, 
and even that of Christ, she was still com- 
paratively in the dark as to the nature of 
Christ's kingdom. 

The disciples of that day, though believing 
him to be " the Christ of God," yet under- 
stood not his errand into the world. It re- 
mained for the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, — 
that is, the Father and the Son moving or 
" coming " together, — to develop to the 
Church finally and fully the grand principles 
and doctrines of the gospel. All this was ac- 
complished by the descent of the Spirit on 
the day of Pentecost ; and how wonderfully 
was this done ! " It filled all the house where 
they were sitting ; " and the cloven fiery 
tongues " sat on each of them ; and they were 
all filled with the Holy Ghost." 

After this great manifestation, we no 
longer hear the apostles saying, " We trusted 
that it had been he which should have re- 
deemed Israel ; " and, " Lord, wilt thou at this 
time restore again the kingdom to Israel ? " 

It came upon them almost as a flash of 
lightning, that the kingdom which Christ 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 97 

came to establish is " not of this world." 
Peter began at once to preach remission of 
sins through faith in the death and resurrec- 
tion of Jesus. That was the first thorough 
gospel sermon ; and three thousand were 
converted and baptized before the sun of that 
day went down. 

What a day for the Church ! We could al- 
most say it was her birthday. Emerging 
from so long a period of darkness, mist, and 
twilight, there now opens on her the full radi- 
ance of a cloudless sun. 

True, the gospel had been preached to men 
ever since the first interview of Christ with 
man, his brother, in the garden, after the 
transgression ; very dimly at first, but open- 
ing gradually with the ages. 

It made some progress under Moses, 
and far greater in the personal ministry 
of Christ ; but now the mystery of redemp- 
tion, hidden for ages, is made clear to the 
understanding by this spiritual teacher. For 
after Christ's ascension there was still need of 
a personal teacher to whom the disciples 
might look for all necessary spiritual instruc- 
tion ; and in this person, the promised Com- 
forter, the need was met. 
9 



9o BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

Let the reader here pause a moment, and 
contemplate this person, the Comforter, as he 
is set forth in the teachings of the Saviour : 
first, the Eternal God the Father ; secondly, 
his begotten Son Jesus Christ ; and thirdly, 
their joint action or influence, personified as 
Holy Spirit, or by some equivalent name, and 
by the Saviour's authority constituted a per- 
son, hence being of necessity the third person 
of the Trinity in the economy of grace and 
salvation ; and who cannot see that these 
three are one ? 

We drop our pen, and, contemplating this 
infinitely wise and sublime arrangement of 
mercy, our eyes moistening with gratitude, 
we exclaim with Paul, " Oh the depth of the 
riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of 
God! How unsearchable are his judgments, 
and his ways past finding out ! For who hath 
known the mind of the Lord ? or who hath 
been his counsellor?" (Rom. xi. 33, 34.) 

Who, indeed, but Deity, all-wise and all- 
merciful, could have devised a scheme so well 
adapted to glorify his exalted name, and at 
the same time so exactly suited to the wants 
of finite, fallen man ? 

Can any fail to see that this is just the 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 99 

Trinity introduced to us by John in his first 
epistle, v. 7 ? He says, " There are three 
that bear record in heaven, — the Father, the 
Word [or Logos], and the Holy Ghost : and 
these three are one." He means, if we 
understand him rightly, as if his words were, 
" There are three in heaven that bear rec- 
ord ; " for surely he could not have intended 
to say that the three are bearing record to the 
inmates of heaven : they need no such testi- 
monies : it is for the men on earth that they 
are designed. The whole context supports 
this idea. 

It may help us to a clearer understanding 
of this passage, on which so much has been 
written, if we inquire, What is the testimony 
of these witnesses ? of what do they bear rec- 
ord ? Of what, we answer, can it be, but of 
that which John is seeking to establish in this 
whole epistle, and especially in the context, 
namely, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, 
and that in him is eternal life ? 

To establish this doctrine more firmly, he 
calls in these witnesses, now in heaven, as hav- 
ing borne testimony to it at Christ's baptism, — 
a testimony which was addressed even to the 
outward senses of men. The Father in an 



100 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

audible voice says, " This is my beloved Son, 
in whom I am well pleased." The Son stands 
among them as a man, then beginning that 
ministry during which he endeavored to re- 
veal himself as the Son of God, and that in 
him was eternal life. Then, in the presence 
of all, the Spirit alights upon him in " bodily 
shape as a dove." 

Here were the "three witnesses," all of 
them " in heaven " when John wrote, more 
than thirty years after their testimonies were 
given. It is clear, too, that the three are 
one ; for Jesus says that he and his Father 
are one ; and we have seen that the Spirit is 
their combined action personified, and there- 
fore one with the Father and the Son. The 
testimony of the three we have also shown to 
be one. This testimony was given on earth ; 
and the record thereof was on earth when 
John wrote ; and it will remain to the end of 
time, bearing witness that Jesus Christ is the 
Son of God, and that in him is eternal life. 

But it may be said that the appearance of 
the Spirit in the shape of a dove is evidence 
that the Holy Ghost was personified before 
the promise of the Comforter was made. 

Just as much evidence, we answer, as any 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. IOI 

of the physical manifestations in previous time. 
God through his Son could as easily assume 
the form of a dove to John and his company, 
as that of a man to Abraham when pleading 
for Sodom, of the burning bush to Moses, 
of a pillar of cloud and of fire to Israel, or 
of a terrific tempest with fire and sound of 
trumpet on Sinai. 

Not, however, till the economy of redemp- 
tion was fully laid open, was it needful, or even 
proper, that this divine agency should be spe- 
cially designated as a person ; for not till this 
time could his new lesson of instruction be 
clearly and fully taught. How could the way 
of salvation through the death and resurrec- 
tion of Christ be clearly taught and under- 
stood until these events had taken place ? 

Hence it was " expedient," not only for the 
apostles, but for all men, that he " should go 
away," in order that the Comforter might come ; 
and, lest the disciples should imagine it to be 
some other person, he tells them that the 
promised Comforter " is the Holy Ghost." 

As if further to guard them against the 
idea of a merely imagined mystical being, 
or some division of a being, he declares 
that the Comforter is the operation of the 



102 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

Father and of himself; saying, " We will come, 
and make our abode with you." It would seem 
that not a word or expression is wanting to 
make this matter clear as is consistent with 
the brevity of revelation. 

It has been questioned, whether the action 
of a being can be properly so personified as to 
justify the application to it of the personal 
pronoun " he ;" but we think it should remove 
this doubt, to consider that the Comforter was 
to be henceforth the only divine Teacher, and 
was clothed with such power as to be able to 
convert three thousand on the first day of his 
manifestation. 

This influence was also to continue and in- 
crease till the whole world should be reno- 
vated. The Comforter was to " convince the 
world of sin, of righteousness, and of judg- 
ment." The pronoun used fitly expresses this 
personal agency. 

Again : it is said that our view makes it im- 
proper to direct prayer to the Comforter ; for 
we cannot pray to a merely personified action. 
But there is a great difference between a merely 
personified action, and the personified action, or 
agency, of the Father and the Son. Can it be 
improper to pray to one in whom the Father 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. IO3 

and the Son are included ? — to one in whose 
coming and influence they both come, as 
Christ said, " We will cornel' — we, in and 
through our joint working, will " abide with you 
forever." 

In our view, we cannot pray to any one of 
the three persons without praying to them all. 
If we pray to the Father, we pray to the Son 
and the Spirit. If we pray to the Son, we 
pray to the Father and the Spirit. If we pray 
to the Spirit, we pray to the Father and the 
Son. We may have either or all in our mind : 
it amounts to the same. 

Here the analogy of the human constitution 
is again applicable. We cannot approach a 
man's soul without approaching his body, nor 
his body without including his soul ; yet the 
two are distinct. The soul is not the body, 
nor the body the soul ; but in their union 
they make one being. Apply this principle to 
prayer to the Father, the Son, or the Spirit, 
and all becomes clear. 

We find, however, the best emblem of the 
personification of the united action of the 
Father and the Son, in the words of Christ to 
the Jewish ruler ; and we desire ever to ac- 
cept his infallible teachings. He compares it 



104 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

to the wind : " The wind bloweth where it 
listeth," &c. (John iii. 8). We all know that 
the wind is one of the most powerful agents 
in nature. But what, now, is the wind ? Is it 
any thing else than the action of the atmos- 
phere ? When there is no movement of the 
atmosphere there is no wind ; and according to 
the velocity of the movement is the wind 
greater or less. 

It is not a person ; but we speak of it al- 
most as if it were ; that is, we seem almost to 
personify it when in common language we 
describe its power in uprooting trees, and de- 
molishing buildings. Applying this now to 
the divine Spirit, or Comforter, we are aided 
to see how the movement of God, or God 
acting, in Christ is designated as a Person in 
carrying forward the work of man's salvation. 

From these witnesses in heaven, let us 
pass to those mentioned in the eighth verse : 
" And there are three that bear witness 
in earth, the spirit and the water and the 
bipod : and these three agree in one." In the 
ninth verse he says, " If we receive the wit- 
ness of men, the witness of God is greater." 
The sixth verse may also help us in obtaining 
information concerning these witnesses. 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 105 

It reads as follows : " This is he that came 
by water and blood, even Jesus Christ ; not by 
water only, but by water and blood ; and 
it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because 
the Spirit is truth." Here we learn who the 
first witness in earth is ; for Jesus, speaking 
of the Comforter, says, " When he, the Spirit 
of truth, shall come, he shall guide you into 
all truth" (John xvi. 13). 

The first, then, of the earthly witnesses is 
the Spirit of truth, or the Comforter. It will 
be remembered that the Spirit, or the Holy 
Ghost, is the last of the three in heaven ; but 
he is the first of the earthly three. Why the 
last then, and the first now ? 

Because, when the three celestial witnesses 
testified at Christ's baptism, the Holy Ghost, 
then appearing as a dove, was, as we have 
said, for a merely temporary and incidental 
purpose, and in the main to be classed with 
the previous manifestations, such as the 
horses and chariot of fire that carried up 
Elijah, the pillar of cloud and fire that led 
Israel, the star that guided the Magi, and the 
spirit that taught the prophets. All these, 
with others, were God's special manifestations 
for special objects, with no distinct person- 
ality. 



106 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

But on the day of Pentecost this same 
manifestation receives not only a new name 
but a new assignment, or official position ; 
and this position is, to be henceforth the sole 
divine Teacher on earth. " He shall guide 
you into all truth" said Jesus ; implying, " You 
are to have no other divine Teacher : my 
Father in heaven, and I at his right hand, by 
our influence, under the new name of the 
Comforter, will come and make our abode 
with you, and finally subdue the world unto 
ourselves." 

We may appeal to the Church for the cor- 
rectness of our conclusion that the Comforter 
is the sole divine Teacher in spiritual things. 
What does any man know of the kingdom of 
God, unless he is taught by this divine In- 
structor ? 

We address those who have been " born of 
the Spirit." " The natural man," we know, 
" receiveth not the things of the Spirit of 
God : for they are foolishness unto him : 
neither can he know them, for they are 
spiritually discerned" (i Cor. ii. 14). 

Every person, therefore, will remain igno- 
rant of this kingdom, and, we may add, 
ignorant of his own moral state, until he is 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 107 

enlightened by the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. 
In vain do we look elsewhere for this kind of 
instruction. We may learn much of God's 
general government from his word and his 
works ; but we must be taught by the Spirit 
in order to know any thing of his spiritual 
kingdom. 

Now, with this idea in our minds, let us 
look at these earthly witnesses. We have 
shown the character of the first, and, we may 
say, the principal, witness of the three ; for the 
other two, as will be seen, witness under him. 
And how does he witness " in earth " ? that is, 
to men, since witnessing to them is the only 
way he can witness " in earth." 

Just as the Saviour said he would : " He 
shall convince of sin and of righteousness 
and of judgment. 7 ' 

Is not this precisely what he has been 
doing ever since the day of Pentecost ? How 
effectually he performed his work on that 
memorable day ! And he has been doing the 
same down to our time. 

He convinces every one to whom he comes 
of sin, showing him to be a condemned sin- 
ner, helpless in himself, and leading him to 
say in his heart, if not with his lips, " What 



108 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

shall I do ? " Just at this point the man is 
prepared to listen to the two other witnesses, 
— the water and the blood. Though two, their 
testimony is one and the same ; for John 
says, "They agree in one." It will be re- 
membered that " Christ came, not by water 
only, but by water and blood." The water 
alone not being deemed sufficient, the "blood " 
is added. 

The water evidently referred to his bap- 
tism. Though his baptism had nothing to do, 
intrinsically, with our redemption, yet it had 
its place, — first, as an initiation into the 
church militant ; and, secondly, as an emblem 
of his death. Paul makes it a prominent 
emblem. " Know ye not, that so many of us 
as were baptized into Jesus Christ were bap- 
tized into his death ? Therefore we are 
buried with him by baptism into death " 
(Rom. vi. 3, 4). 

We understand the " water " to refer to 
baptism as an emblem of Christ's death. The 
blood, or the shedding of blood, is the death. 
This is a common use of the word in the 
New Testament. The blood of Christ is his 
death. We have, then, in these two last wit- 
nesses, the emblem of his death, and the 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. IO9 

death itself. The emblem alone was not suf- 
ficient to show his death : " not by water 
only." The " blood," the third witness, must 
confirm the testimony of the emblem ; " and 
these three agree in one," viz., that men have 
broken God's law, and are condemned. The 
first witness teaches this, and, with the help 
of the other two, shows that there is redemp- 
tion through the atonement made by the 
death of Jesus Christ. The first witness, as 
we have said, is the teacher : the other two 
witness under him. He himself shows man 
his condition, and then, by the other two, the 
way of release. 

"Jesus paid it all, — all the debt I owe." 

Let us dwell a moment longer on these six 
witnesses. The first three proclaim the man 
Jesus to be the Son of God, and then return 
again into heaven. They do not profess to 
set forth the great errand on which he came : 
that was left for the three earthly witnesses. 
When the work of redemption is completed, 
this great, final Teacher comes, rather is sent ; 
and the three witnesses " in earth " apply the 
redemptive grace to and in men. 



110 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

To us this seems wonderful ; and it all is 
the provision of our heavenly Father, that we 
might escape the consequences of trans- 
gression. None but God could have devised 
the plan ; and none but the God-man, with the 
Comforter to apply the whole, could have con- 
summated it. We can again adopt Paul's 
language to the Romans, " Who hath known 
the mind of the Lord ? or who hath been his 
counsellor ? " 

We have dwelt the longer on these verses, 
for the reason that some writers have clung 
to the seventh as proof of an original Trinity 
in the Godhead. We ask the reader to turn 
again to this fifth chapter of John's first 
Epistle, and read from the sixth to the thir- 
teenth verses. Let him notice the object of 
the writer, and see if he can discover any 
thing, even a word, which favors the idea that 
the apostle was thinking of a Trinity in the 
Godhead. Was he not treating wholly of the 
Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God and 
the Saviour of men ? Let him judge, too, 
whether our observations do not accord with 
the writer's aim. Can any one believe that 
he would turn aside from his grand object, 
and seek to lead his reader back into an 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. I I I 

illimitable eternity, and set him to scanning a 
subject which neither he nor any one can 
really understand ? No : his theme was too 
important, and his time too valuable to be 
thus thrown away. 

We are not unaware that strong doubts 
have been expressed as to the genuineness of 
these verses, more especially the seventh, 
and that much has been written on both sides 
of the question. But, irrespective of their 
absence in many manuscripts, we believe 
them to be John's writing for the following 
reasons : (i) They are in good keeping 
with John's usual manner of expression. (2) 
They form a connection with the preceding 
sixth verse, and with the following ninth, 
tenth, and eleventh verses. (3) They are 
just what John needed to establish his doc- 
trine ; and we think them most happily and 
cogently introduced at this very point. What 
stronger testimony could he have ? The 
eternal God, on two occasions, declares Jesus 
to be his " beloved Son : " next, the Son, 
by word and by miracle, asserts this title 
for himself: then, that the highest number 
of witnesses required by the law might 
not be wanting, the Spirit, in the form 



112 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

of a dove, alights and "abides on him/' 
Again we ask, what testimony could be more 
worthy of trust ? John refers to it as of the 
strongest possible weight. " If we receive 
the witness of men, the witness of God is 
greater." To what other witness of God 
could he refer than to the above-named ? 
These witnesses have been, still are, and ever 
will be, essential to the strength of the 
Church ; and neither as a body nor in her 
individual members can she dispense with 
them. 

Let us now look a moment at what may be 
supposed to be the consequences of these 
views. 

First, what would the Church lose, if, 
abandoning the doctrine of an eternal divine 
Son, she should adopt the view herein pre- 
sented ? We have carefully examined this 
question ; and we cannot see that there would 
be the smallest loss. On the contrary, it 
seems to us there would be much gain. She 
would have her eternal God, as heretofore. 
She would have a Son of God of equal power, 
attributes, and possessions with the eternal 
God. What can she have more, in the Son ? 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. II3 

She would have a complete Saviour in this 
Son, who has made a perfect atonement for 
her and for all men if they will accept it. She 
has the Comforter, who is the Holy Ghost, 
including Father and Son, to teach the nature 
and things of the divine kingdom. She has 
a Trinity ; perfect, divine, rational, whose ex- 
istence and application she can contemplate 
with pleasure and profit. We cannot see 
what she would lose. 

On the other hand, what would be gained 
by her adopting such a course ? 

First, as remarked by Dr. I. Watts (" Glory 
of Christ," p. 203), treating on the pre-exist- 
ence of the human soul of Christ. He says, 
" This doctrine casts a surprising light on 
many dark passages in the word of God : it 
does very naturally and easily explain and 
reconcile several difficult places, both in the 
Old and New Testaments, which are very 
hard to be accounted for in any other way." 

Take, for instance, the first two verses in 
John's Gospel, on which we have commented. 
Critics and interpreters generally, in their 
observations thereon, seem to us to make 
mystery more mysterious. The mind invol- 
untarily fixes on two beings. There is the 
10* 



114 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

Word which " was with God." We defy any- 
one to explain this on the generally received 
doctrine of the Son. If the Word was God 
from all eternity, and there is also God the 
Father with whom " the Word was," we can- 
not efface from the mind the idea of two 
Gods. 

Again : take the words of God in the second 
Psalm, to which we have also referred : "Thou 
art my Son ; this day have I begotten thee : 
ask of me," &c. We will suppose at a cer- 
tain period God had begotten or brought into 
existence the Logos or Son ; and he now 
informs this Son of his origin, and his relation 
to him : we would ask, What words could the 
Father use that would convey this informa- 
tion better and more directly than those 
recorded by the Psalmist ? Look at this 
short paragraph ; how concise and God-like ! 
— the almighty Father addressing this new- 
born, " only-begotten Son " (probably before 
the union), and declaring to him he was his 
son, and pledging to him a pre-eminence. 
How this harmonizes with the words of Jesus ! 
— " The Father loveth the Son, and hath 
given all things into his hands" (John iii. 35). 

Now, if there is a doctrine fully supported 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 115 

by Scripture, of which it cannot be said, " It 
is made up of mysteries which no one even 
attempts to explain," would it not be gain to 
the Church to adopt it in the place of one to 
which the Scriptures lend no support ? Not 
that we deny that there are mysteries in the 
kingdom of God as well as in Nature. 

How God united a created being with him- 
self, we do not know, as we have before said, 
though we are assured of the fact by Jesus 
himself. 

How the divine power wrought in the 
decaying body of Lazarus, so as to bring it- 
back to life, we do not know, though we 
believe it was done, as the inspired writer 
tells us. How the Comforter enlightens, and 
brings the natural man into the liberty of the 
gospel, we may not be able to explain : but of 
the fact we are sure ; for we have experienced 
the process in ourselves. 

The how in these and many other of God's 
dealings is among " the secret things which 
belong to God ; " but the facts are among the 
revealed things which belong to us. 

Again : these views of Christ and of his 
union with the Father bring the doctrine of 
the Trinity within the grasp of our faculties. 



Il6 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

It is no longer a mysterious idea beyond our 
reach, but a doctrine realized in the heart of 
the believer. It will be seen that the unity 
and personality of God the Father are herein 
strictly maintained without any imaginary 
division of his essence, and also the person- 
ality of the Son as in himself a distinct 
being. 

We shall hereafter show in what sense we 
ascribe personality to the Holy Ghost. We 
believe in the personality of the three, — 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and that they 
are one. 

These are Bible terms ; and our motto is to 
follow strictly the obvious intention of the 
writers of the sacred volume. But that 
book does not teach that the three existed 
in the Godhead from all eternity ; this is a 
device of man : rather it teaches that the 
Trinity was brought in with the economy of 
salvation. 

Further, not the least benefit to be derived 
from these views will be found in the clear, 
unobstructed channel, or " way," as Jesus 
calls it, to the one eternal Jehovah, with no 
other mediation than that of the man Jesus, 
our elder brother. Since he is one with the 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 117 

Father, in approaching him we approach the 
Father, as he tells us in John xiv. 6 : " No 
man cometh to the Father, but by me." 

We cannot approach the soul of a neighbor 
but by and through his body, nor come to his 
body separate from his soul : even so with 
Jesus and the Father ; they cannot be ap- 
proached separately. 

How elevating the thought that our facili- 
ties of access to this Elder Brother so far 
exceed those of the people when he was in 
the flesh ! 

We need not to go to Jerusalem or Naz- 
areth or Capernaum, or any other place, to 
find him ; but wherever we are, on land or 
sea, in the palace or in the dungeon, we can 
come to the same Man to whom the leper 
said, " If thou wilt, thou canst make me 
clean," and from whom virtue went out to 
heal the woman who touched the hem of his 
garment. Yes, to. this same Jesus (the only 
difference being that his body is now trans- 
formed into a spiritual body) we can come as 
familiarly as any who sought him when on 
earth, and with the advantage, also, of know- 
ing that in addressing him we address the 
eternal God his Father. 



Il8 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

Is not the thought sublime, that we, imper- 
fect creatures, naturally estranged from our 
beneficent Father, are brought near through 
our Elder Brother Jesus, and can hold com- 
munion with him, and tell him all our wants, 
as really and as readily as we could to our 
natural brother ? Let us keep in mind that it 
is the one eternal God, his and our Father, 
whom we thus approach ; not an eternal Son : 
we know no place for, or need of such a son. 
We have free and complete access to God the 
Father through our Brother Jesus ; and what 
can we ask or wish for more ? 

Jesus said to Mary Magdalene, " Go to my 
brethren, and say unto them, I ascend to my 
Father, and your Father ; to my God and your 
God" (John xx. 17). Here the man Jesus 
places himself on a perfect equality with his 
disciples. He calls them "brethren," and 
affirms that God was his Father and God, as 
essentially as he was their Father and God. 
And, as to his humanity, he was on an equal- 
ity with them, and just as dependent ; but we 
remember that this Brother is so united to 
God as to be one with him in so close con- 
nection, that whatever we say to him we say 
to the infinite Jehovah. The thought seems 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. II9 

well nigh overwhelming. We wonder not 
that we read, "When he bringeth in the first- 
begotten into the world, he saitb, And let 
all the angels of God worship him ; " for it is 
plain that in worshipping him they would 
worship the Father in him. Was not this a 
proper demand when this complex person, 
Father and Son united in one, descended 
from heaven, and took upon him a human 
body prepared for him ? And was not this 
body a suitable tenement for such a personage, 
— generated by the Holy Ghost, born of the 
Blessed Virgin ? Surely a fit incarnation for 
such a being, in order to dwell with men on 
earth. 

And now we have in Christ Jesus, not 
only what was said by the prophet some seven 
hundred years before the event, literally 
"Emmanuel," God with us, but even more, 
— God one of us. 

Is it singular that at such an event the 
angels should sing, " Glory to God in the 
highest, on earth peace, good-will towards 
men " ? Think for a moment who this person 
was who is thus announced from heaven : no 
less than the Creator of the world. Is it not 
astonishing, when all this was for man's bene- 



120 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

fit, that he should be so slow to respond 
to these ascriptions ? And how appropriate 
is the language of Isaiah when applied to this 
personage! — " For unto us a child is born, 
unto us a son is given: and the government 
shall be upon his shoulder : and his name shall 
be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The 
Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, 
The Prince of Peace " (Is. ix. 6). How won- 
derfully we see all these combined, literally, 
in the babe of Bethlehem ! but this could not 
be were he an eternal Son. How could such 
a Son be called " The Everlasting Father ? " 

Again : how these views tend to exalt the 
human race ! That the Infinite Jehovah should 
be united to one of our own species, the 
first-begotten Son, and coming with him into 
our world, with and in him be united to a 
human body, also of his own begetting, and 
dwell on earth as one of us, — what wonder- 
ful condescension and mercy ! In view of 
the sublimity of this subject, we can exclaim 
with the apostle, " Great is the mystery of 
godliness. God was manifested [marginal 
rendering] in the flesh," &c. 

We have aimed to show that the doctrine 
of an eternal divine Son is not found in the 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 121 

Bible. We have also aimed to show, from 
Scripture authority, who the Son of God is, 
and what constitutes his divinity. How far 
we have succeeded, the reader must judge. 

A certain writer in " The Edinburgh Re- 
view," discussing a religious doctrine, said, 
" Whoever finds it in the New Testament 
must first put it there." So say we of the 
doctrine of an eternal divine Son. We know 
that, like many other prevailing opinions, it is 
imagined to be there ; but, from the obvious 
meaning of the writers of that book, we are 
unable to discover it. 

We well know that the pre-existence of the 
human soul of Christ is no new doctrine. It 
was taught many centuries ago. When it 
was first promulgated, we are unable to say. 
It was advocated by men of high standing in 
the Church in the early part of the eigh- 
teenth century. The learned and pious Dr. 
Watts, after much examination, embraced 
and ably defended it. He wrote a special 
work on the subject, entitled " The Glory of 
Christ." He shows in this from the Scrip- 
tures that the human soul of Christ actually 
existed before the creation of the world, and 
that the creating or begetting of it was the 
11 



122 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

first act of God of which we have any knowl- 
edge. He shows, further, that God so took 
this soul of Christ into union with himself, 
that the two beings became in this way one. 
As would naturally happen, we have been led 
to use, in setting forth our views, much the 
same scriptures as those to which he refers. 

But we must be allowed to say that it was 
more than three years after our own mind 
was settled on this subject, that we first 
learned that Dr. Watts or any other person 
(except one private brother) ever held such 
views. When, providentially, Dr. Watts's 
book fell into our hands, we were surprised at 
the coincidence of his ideas with our own 
concerning Christ's pre-existence and union 
with the Father. Eventually we saw the 
conflict between these ideas and the received 
doctrine of the Trinity. For, if the human 
soul of Christ was the " first-begotten " Son 
of God, then there could be no eternal first 
begotten Son ; and, if no eternal Son, there 
could be no eternal Trinity. After much 
examination, comparing scripture with scrip- 
ture, we were compelled to adopt the views 
herein set forth. 

Then, with respect to the third person in 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 123 

the Trinity, we found ourselves in somewhat 
similar difficulties. We saw that in the Com- 
forter Christ had constituted a person whom 
he called "another." We thought we saw that 
by the word " another," he meant a person in 
the place of himself. But, having observed 
that Christ and John expressly declared that 
the Holy Ghost, whom we had all along held 
to be the third person in the eternal Trinity, 
" had not yet been given," and that Christ 
further declared there should come " another 
Comforter, the Spirit of truth," we could not 
see how to avoid the conclusion that there 
must be a fourth person, also, in the Trinity. 
On diligent search, as in the other cases, we 
could find no ground for believing in this 
third person in the Godhead, or in any third 
person at all, before the coming of the Com- 
forter. There had been, indeed, various mani- 
festations of God ; but we could see no more 
propriety for attributing to them a distinct 
personality than to the acts of men. We were 
obliged to abandon the idea of an eternal Son, 
and also that of an eternal third person, and 
be content with what the sacred volume 
teaches ; and we found in this all that man 
needs. 



124 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

A word more about Dr. Watts. We could 
not learn that he ever relinquished the doc- 
trine of an eternal Son in the Godhead. Yet 
he must have seen that his views of Christ's 
pre-existence were in direct conflict with that 
doctrine ; for, if the created human soul of 
Christ was the Logos who was with the 
Father at the beginning, and was the Son by 
whom God made the worlds, he could not be 
the eternal Son ; and if there was no eternal 
Son, then there was no eternal Trinity. 

Here, we think, was his difficulty. He had 
taught the common doctrine of the Trinity in 
prose and song. He also very clearly and 
scripturally advocated the other doctrine as to 
the nature of Christ. The two doctrines, of 
course, could not both be true ; and yet he 
stood as the advocate of both. It is not to 
be wondered at, that, as some have said, "his 
mind was unsettled." 

The Unitarians claimed him as one who 
had given up Trinitarianism and embraced 
their views. On the other side it was said 
he had relinquished his views with regard to 
the pre-existence of Christ's humanity. Rev. 
S. Palmer, who claimed to possess his latest 
writings and manuscripts, contradicts this 



THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 125 

report. The probability seems to be, that he 
was re-examining the whole subject when his 
Master called him up higher. 

We have no evidence that what we have 
suggested were the difficulties in the doctor's 
mind; but it is quite evident, that, in his latter 
days, he was troubled on these points ; and 
that he should have been is not surpris- 
ing. Our conclusions touching Dr. Watts 
are drawn from our own personal exercises. 
We well remember the morass we had to 
wade through when we felt called on to give 
up a doctrine cherished as fundamental in the 
evangelic Church, and one to which we sub- 
scribed when uniting with the Church mili- 
tant. But we had pledged ourselves to follow 
the Saviour in our doctrinal views as well as 
in practice, so far as we could understand the 
teachings of his lips ; and this we hope we 
have done. Accordingly, we gave up the doc- 
trine of an eternal divine Son ; and conse- 
quently, that of a Trinity of persons in the 
Godhead, whether real or supposed ; and also 
that of an eternal third person. In lieu 
thereof, we find a present, active, comprehen- 
sible Trinity, such as the Saviour and the 
apostles appear to us to present, — a Trinity 



126 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

which finds its full expression in the person 
and work of the Comforter. This is a Trinity 
which we can not only understand, but whose 
value and power we can feel, — a Trinity of 
practical use to mankind. 

Several eminent divines, about the time of 
Dr. Watts, embraced the doctrine of the pre- 
existence of Christ's human soul ; but, that 
any one of them took the ground that there 
was no Trinity in the Godhead, we have not 
learned. That seemed to be too near Arian- 
ism and modern Unitarianism to be accepted. 
Though firmly believed by some of the most 
pious and able divines to be a doctrine of the 
Bible, it was allowed for the time to sink into 
neglect. 

The learned and pious Bishop Fowler of 
Gloucester is reported to have said, in a 
treatise on the pre-existence of Christ's 
humanity, " There is no Christian doctrine 
more clearly delivered than this, and even 
by the Saviour himself, and often repeated by 
him; and there is not more plain and undeni- 
able evidence for any one article of faith than 
for this doctrine ; and that this is the sense 
in which, most certainly, the disciples of our 
Lord understood his declarations." 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 127 

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 

We now call attention to several passages 
of Scripture, most of which have not been 
quoted in these pages, but which have a 
direct bearing on the subjects under con- 
sideration ; and, that the force both of the 
passages themselves and of our remarks upon 
them may be more distinctly seen, we will 
state what we understand to be the general 
doctrines of the evangelical Church on these 
points, adducing in contrast therewith our own 
views. 

We understand the long-cherished doc- 
trines of the Church to be these : First, that 
the supreme God is one eternal, underived 
being. Secondly, that he exists in three per- 
sons (or manifestations or distinctions ; for 
herein there is diversity of opinion : but all 
claim, that, in some sense, he is three, viz., 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) ; and these 
three, all equally eternal, constitute his being, 
and are the first, second, and third persons in 
a divine Trinity. Thirdly, that four thousand 
years or more after the creation, the Father 
sent this divine Son, one in will with himself, 
to earth, where he united himself with Jesus, 



128 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

the babe of Bethlehem ; and this union of the 
eternal Son with the human child made the 
child divine, and constituted the Christ. 

Such is the general belief ; though some 
who are reputed orthodox may partially dis- 
sent. 

Now we assume that there is not a shadow 
of evidence that any of the sacred writers 
ever entertained the idea of an eternal divine 
Son, or of a third person in the Godhead ; and 
that there was, in fact, no third person at all, 
until the Comforter, promised by Jesus, was 
manifested on the day of Pentecost. 

A word further before proceeding with our 
quotations. We do not suppose a belief in 
either of these schemes of doctrine essential to 
salvation, nor that clearly-defined views as to 
the character and atonement of Christ are indis- 
pensable in order to enter into life. Cornelius 
had, evidently, no distinct views of Christ as a 
Saviour ; yet he was undoubtedly a pious man, 
and an heir of heaven, before Peter preached 
to him the way of redemption through Christ. 
The eloquent Apollos was, beyond doubt, a 
Christian before Aquila and Priscilla " ex- 
pounded to him the way of God more per- 
fectly." Very few Christians have an under- 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 1 29 

standing of the plan of redemption, when first 
adopted into the family of God. It is a cause 
of gratitude that the way of eternal life is 
level to the capacity of any ordinarily en- 
dowed person. It is simply to repent and to 
accept the offered Saviour. 

Passing now to examine the testimony of 
Scripture, it is not necessary to quote the pas- 
sages consecutively as they stand in the New 
Testament. 

John i. 15: "John [the harbinger] bare 
witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he 
of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is 
preferred before me : for he was before me? 
(See also the thirtieth verse.) Then in verse 
1 8, before referred to, he says, " No man hath 
seen God at any time ; the only begotten 
Son, which is [or was, as explained by some] 
in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared 
him/' He says further (verses 32, 34), " I 
saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a 
dove, and it abode upon him. And I saw, 
and bare record that this is the Son of God." 
On whom did the Spirit abide ? Was it not 
on the man Jesus, whom John had just bap- 
tized ? And was it not that same man of 
whom John bears record " that this is the Son 



130 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

of God ? " Should any one say that it was 
the divine Son united with the man Jesus, to 
whom John thus refers, we beg to ask him 
where he gets this information. Here also 
belongs verse 36, where John, " looking upon 
Jesus as he walked, saith, Behold the Lamb 
of God ! " 

Again : in the memorable conversation with 
Nicodemus, narrated in the third chapter of 
this gospel, Jesus says (verse 13), "No man 
hath ascended up to heaven, but he that 
came down from heaven, even the Son of man, 
which is [was] in heaven." Several writers 
have seized on the clause, " The Son of man 
which is in heaven," as proof of the indepen- 
dent divinity of Christ, arguing that, as a 
man on earth, he could not be in heaven at 
the same time, and that he must therefore 
refer to his divine nature, in which, as God, he 
fills immensity, and can thus be at once both 
in heaven and on earth. But do they not 
forget that it is the Son of man who is said 
to be in heaven, and that this title always 
includes the humanity, and generally means 
the humanity alone ? 

Further : in the eighteenth verse of the first 
chapter, just quoted, the harbinger calls this 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 131 

Son of man " the only begotten Son ;" and we 
think it has been already shown that the 
only begotten Son was that human soul 
which was " the beginning of the creation of 
God." The name " Son of man," here given 
him, seems to confirm this position. As to 
the word " is" some linguists say that it could 
be properly translated " was ; " and certainly 
the context and the natural sense of the pas- 
sages, whether referring to a divine or human 
Son, seem to require that translation. 

This thirteenth verse is evidently a con- 
firmation of what was said in the eleventh, 
" We speak that we do know, and testify that 
we have seen." Now, to justify this declara- 
tion, Jesus says to his inquirer that no man 
on earth, except himself, could declare what 
he had seen and heard in heaven ; for the 
reason that no other man had been there. 

It will be remembered that Nicodemus, 
from the first, recognized him as " a teacher 
come from God." Jesus talks with him as a 
man to a man, and uses his common title, the 
" Son of man." We do not suppose him to 
have understood exactly how Jesus was a 
teacher come from God, though he believed it 
was so : yet we insist that the words of Christ 



132 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

very clearly explained to him the fact. The 
Son of man, the person then talking with 
him, had been in heaven, had come down 
thence, had assumed the human body, and in 
that body was now telling him what he had 
seen and heard in the heavenly world. He 
only could give such testimony. Is not this 
the natural import of the language which he 
uses ? 

We have also in this third chapter further 
testimony of Christ, from John the Baptist. 
We ask the reader to turn to this chapter, and 
read from the twenty-seventh verse to the 
end, that he may be the better prepared to 
judge of the correctness of our remarks on 
some of these verses. " He that cometh from 
above is above all : he that is of the earth is 
earthly, and speaketh of the earth : he that 
cometh from heaven is above all. And what 
he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth " 
(verses 31, 32). We have before referred to 
this passage, but adduce it here as intimately 
connected with the whole paragraph to which 
we are calling attention. Its close agreement 
with the above-quoted declarations of Christ 
to Nicodemus will not escape notice. Both 
speak of what the " Son of man " saw and 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 1 33 

heard in heaven. We quote also verses 34, 
35 : " For he whom God hath sent speaketh 
the words of God : for God giveth not the 
Spirit by measure unto him. The Father 
loveth the Son, and hath given all things into 
his hand." 

Let the reader ponder carefully these 
verses, comparing the last two with those just 
before cited, and then judge for himself 
whether the following remarks are well 
founded. 

We have said that it involves, if not im- 
propriety, at least confusion of thought, to 
speak of God the Father as sending God the 
Son. And how could it be said that God the 
Father giveth not to God the Son the Spirit 
by measure ; that is, as we take it, by limit ? 
Would not the Son, if inherently God, of the 
same essence as the Father, have always 
possessed the same measure of the Spirit as 
the Father ? How, then, is the Spirit given at 
all, if the alleged receiver already has all that 
the giver possesses ? Does not the expres- 
sion, "giveth the Spirit," necessarily convey the 
idea of two distinct beings, one bestowing and 
the other receiving ? Can we possibly get 
any other idea from the expression ? This 



134 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

passage accordingly presents the Son as 
destitute of the Spirit, except as bestowed on 
him by the Father, and agrees with what 
Christ declared, that "the Son can do nothing 
of himself/' showing that he was impotent as 
to any divine power, save as he received it 
from the omnipotent Father. 

Here, again, we see how well John the har- 
binger and Christ agree. John declared, 
" God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto 
him." Christ says, " All mine are thine, and 
thine are mine" (John xvii. 10) ; and, "all 
power is given unto me in heaven and in 
earth" (Matt, xxviii. 18). The harbinger 
says again (verse 35), " The Father loveth the 
Son, and hath given all things into his hand." 
What meaning in this, if applied to God the 
Father and a Son in himself divine ? — God 
the Father loving God the Son, of the same 
essence with himself. God loves God, — the 
lover and the loved the same : this would be 
mystery indeed. On this ground, why not 
with all propriety reverse the order, and say, 
" God the Son loveth God the Father, and 
hath given all things into his hand " ? Both, 
in the supposition, are literally and absolutely 
God ; neither, then, is superior or inferior. 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 1 35 

There is oneness only : otherwise they form 
two beings ; in which case one could not be 
in himself God, with which admission the 
whole system falls. 

If the reader will take the language of 
Nicodemus as literally true, that Christ was a 
" teacher come from God ; " if he will allow 
that God, his literal Father, took the Son into 
union with himself, dwelt in him on earth, 
and worked with and through him his mighty 
works, — he will find all the above-quoted pas- 
sages, and the prayer in the seventeenth 
chapter of John, easy and natural. All mys- 
ticism vanishes at once. 

John v. 23 : " That all men should honor 
the Son, even as they honor the Father. He 
that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the 
Father which hath sent him." This passage is 
often adduced in proof of Christ's inherent 
divinity. The argument from it is, that, as 
the Son is of the same essence as the Father, 
he of course deserves equal honor. The pas- 
sage certainly is evidence of divinity in 
Christ ; but is the above deduction author- 
ized ? Does it accord with the other teach- 
ings of Christ ? Does he not often assert the 
inferiority of the Son, and that the ground of 



I36 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

his superiority over men lies in his union 
with the Father ? — not with a divine Son, but 
" the Father that dwelleth in me," as though 
ne would say again, " I and my Father are 
one." This is the reason why " all men 
should honor the Son, even as they honor the 
Father," and why " he that honoreth not the 
Son honoreth not the Father." The thought 
is, that the way to honor God is to honor him 
in Christ. In the immediately preceding 
verse he says, " The Father judgeth no man, 
but hath committed all judgment unto the 
Son," showing that the Father authorizes and 
empowers the Son. Paul in his speech at 
Athens says, " God hath appointed a day, in 
the which he will judge the world in right- 
eousness by that man whom he hath or- 
dained." Was not " that man," thus referred 
to, the Son, to whom God " hath committed 
judgment, and whom all should honor even 
as they honor the Father"? If it was an 
eternal divine Son, Paul made a most serious 
mistake in calling him a " man." Take, how- 
ever, Jesus' own words, " I am in the Father, 
and the Father in me," and grant that the two, 
by virtue of this union, are one, and there is 
no discrepancy between him and Paul, and 
no difficulty in understanding them. 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 1 37 

Yes : it was " that man," our Elder Brother, 
and your brother, dear reader, if you have 
faith in him, to whom all judgment has been 
committed ; and Paul was right in telling the 
Athenians that they, with all the rest of 
the world, were to be judged by " that man 
whom he hath ordained." How consoling the 
thought that our Brother, who is also our 
Redeemer, is to be our judge! Whom else 
would we have ? 

John vi. 46 : " Not that any man hath seen 
the Father, save he which is of God : he hath 
seen the Father." Christ here speaks of him- 
self as a man like other men ; and we detect 
no reference to a divine nature : no man (and 
he speaks of men generally) save himself 
alone, who is directly, soul and body, of God. 
Now, it is certain that neither he nor any 
other man could see God by natural vision ; 
for " God is a Spirit;" and spirit can be seen 
by no bodily eye. Jesus, then, in order to 
have seen the Father, must have existed as a 
man in a different state from that in which he 
then was ; and what could it have been but 
his pre-existent state ? We claim this to be 
a fair deduction from the premises. Alone it 

may not afford positive proof of our doctrine ; 
12* 



I3§ BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

but, in connection with so many similar pas- 
sages, and in the absence of a single item of 
evidence to the contrary, we present it as a 
strong confirmation of our views. 

The passage harmonizes with, and helps 
explain, Christ's words to Nieodemus, " We 
speak that we do know, and testify that we 
have seen!' In each instance he speaks as a 
man. Then, too, the expression " He which 
is of God" implies derivation from God, and 
is inapplicable to a divine Son unless we 
allow an " eternal generation," which we can- 
not do. 

John vi. 5 1 : "I am the living bread which 
came down from heaven : if any man eat of 
this bread, he shall live forever : and the 
bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will 
give for the life of the world." 

This was said in the discourse at Caper- 
naum, from which the last quotation was 
made. Many of the disciples said of it, " It is 
a hard saying ; " and the Jews objected, 
" How can this man give us his flesh to 
eat ? " 

The term " flesh " in Scripture has a variety 
of meanings. It often signifies humanity, or 
man, as including both soul and body. This 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 1 39 

seems to be the meaning in the passage under 
consideration. In giving his " flesh for the 
life of the world," our Lord doubtless means 
that he would yield up his entire humanity, 
his soul and body, to bear the penalty of the 
divine law, for man's salvation. Now, by 
employing together the two figures, " flesh " 
and "bread" (or "manna"), our Lord repre- 
sents what neither of these figures would ex- 
press alone. The " flesh," as already said, 
points to the body and the soul of Christ, 
both of which were necessary in making a per- 
fect offering, a complete atonement. " Thou 
shalt make his soul an offering for sin" (Isa. 
liii. 10). "A body hast thou prepared me" 
(Heb. x. 5). Now, as the body of Christ did 
not come down from heaven, though his soul 
did, the term " flesh " would not be the suit- 
able one to express the idea of Christ's pre- 
existence. It would imply that body, as well 
as soul, had been in heaven. Hence the 
term " bread [or " manna"] which came down 
from heaven" was used, as fitly expressing 
this idea of the soul alone, that human soul 
of Christ, which came down from heaven. 

And, to express the whole truth, — that is, 
both that Christ, as to his soul, came from 



140 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

heaven, and that he suffered and died in the 
flesh, — the two figurative expressions "bread" 
and " flesh " are used together : " the bread 
that I will give is my flesh." 

It was, then, the voluntary act of the hu- 
manity of Christ thus to come from heaven, 
to give himself for the life of the world. 
Hence they must eat his flesh and drink his 
blood (which is the life: Gen. ix. 4) ; that is, 
in order to possess eternal life they must ap- 
propriate by faith the benefits purchased by 
his death. Neither his disciples nor the Jesw 
understood him ; and how could they ? for he 
was referring to the way of salvation through 
the atonement, which was not then com- 
pleted. He sought to explain it to the dis- 
ciples ; but not till the day of Pentecost, when 
the new Teacher came and " guided them 
into all truth," was the matter made clear to 
them. 

The whole discourse teaches us that in 
Christ alone is eternal life. The manna given 
to the Israelites was the emblem of this life. 
As the manna seemed to come from the 
visible heavens, so he (i. e., his humanity, 
the spiritual manna or bread) came down 
from the true heaven to give life to the 
world. 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. I4I 

John vii. 28, 29 : " Ye both know me, and 
ye know whence I am : and I am not come 
of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom 
ye know not. But I know him : for I am 
from him, and he sent me." 

Let the reader consider well these verses, 
and then say if the language would naturally 
be used in relating a transaction between God 
the Father and a God the Son, of the same 
essence and will. Does not the whole repre- 
sentation point clearly to two beings with two 
wills ? Take especially the last declarations, 
" I am from him, and he sent me : " if these, 
in agreement with the many others quoted, 
do not indicate two beings and two wills, then 
we do not understand the force of words. We 
think, too, that any attempt to turn these 
passages from their plain and obvious mean- 
ing is an unwarranted use of the sacred writ- 
ings. 

John viii. 14, 23 : " For I know whence I 
came, and whither I go ; but ye cannot tell 
whence I come and whither I go." 

" Ye are from beneath ; I am from above : 
ye are of this world ; I am not of this world." 

These verses contribute nothing to our doc- 
trine, provided the speaker includes in him- 



142 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

self a divine, eternal Son. But, if we make 
him include such a Son here, what shall we do 
in the following twenty-eighth verse ? — where 
he says, " When ye have lifted up the Son of 
man, then shall ye know that I am he ; " that 
is, " I am this Son of man who was from 
above," who adds, " I do nothing of myself ; but 
as my Father hath tatight me, I speak these 
things." If a divine Son is included here (we 
say it reverently), he is represented as a very 
inefficient being. He is impotent, can do 
nothing of himself. The far-fetched com- 
ment, that, as the divine Son is of the same 
essence as the Father, he can do nothing 
separately from the Father, is an exposition 
of these and similar passages which we can 
never accept. The context and all Christ's 
teachings on this point preclude such an in- 
terpretation. The whole tenor of these pas- 
sages goes to show the inability of the person 
speaking to do any thing of himself. He 
must be taught by the Father even what to 
speak, He did not come into the world of 
himself, but was sent, as verse 42 shows. 

Again : John xii. 49 : " For I have not 
spoken of myself; but the Father which sent 
me, he gave me a commandment, what I 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. I43 

should say, and what I should speak." Here 
we have the same idea fully developed. 
Whoever the speaker using this pronoun of 
the first person is, he represents himself as 
altogether inferior to the Father, and subject 
entirely to his direction and control. Even 
if we suppose, that, according to the common 
doctrine, the man Jesus was united to a di- 
vine Son, and, in all these passages, includes 
in himself the divine and the human Jesus, 
would not all this seem a very improper use 
of language for the purpose ? Would it not 
lead his hearers to think of him as another 
being, inferior to the Father? Does it not 
convey this idea to us ? 

John xiii. 3, 4 : " Jesus knowing that the 
Father had given all things into his hands, 
and that he was come from God, and went 
to God ; he riseth from supper," &c. We see 
not to what these words of John can refer, 
except to the soul of Christ. Jesus was his 
human name, and in itself did not include the 
divine nature. It was the man Jesus, who 
ascended from Mount Olivet ; and was it not 
the same man that " came from God ? " 
True, he ascended with a glorified body 
which he had received on earth, to which, of 
course, John does not refer. 



144 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

In short, we cannot find, from any thing 
that John says of Christ here or elsewhere, 
that he ever thought of him as united to an 
eternal divine Son. He makes his divinity 
consist in his union with the Father. He 
seems to us to have clearly understood this, 
and to have written with this thought in his 
mind. In the same way the apostles appear 
to have understood it. We cannot doubt 
that all the disciples so received it, so far as 
they had knowledge of Christ. 

John xiv= 24, 28 : " And the word which ye 
hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent 
me." 

" If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because 
I said, I go unto the Father : for my Father is 
greater than I." 

We will not spend much time in comment- 
ing on these verses. If the reader can under- 
stand the pronouns " me," " I," and " my," 
which Jesus here applies to himself, as in- 
cluding an eternal Son equal to the Father, 
his capacity far exceeds ours. If language 
can be used to represent two beings, the one 
subordinate to the other, we think this lan- 
guage does so. If Jesus had said, " God who 
dwelleth in me is greater than I," whether it 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 145 

were the Father or the Son, no one would 
have doubted that the word " I " included 
only the humanity; and, if a divine Son was 
united to him, why did not Jesus say, " The 
Son who dwelleth in me is greater than I " ? 
If there was such a Son, why was there not 
some allusion to him in Christ's preach- 
ing? 

We must remind the reader not to mistake 
our position with regard to Christ, lest he 
suspect us of lowering the view of his charac- 
ter. We believe him verily God, and verily 
man, — man as to his human soul, begotten 
by the Father, and also as to his body, which 
was born of a woman ; and God by virtue of 
his union with his Father in such a way as 
to make them one. The word Christ (the 
Anointed) includes both the Father and the 
begotten human soul, or God and man ; and 
the begetting and union were before the 
creation of the world. " In the fulness of 
time " this complex being took a human body. 
Let the reader keep in mind these cardinal 
ideas while we proceed a little farther with 
our quotations. 

John xv. 24 : " If I had not done among 
them the works which none other man did, 
13 



I46 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

they had not had sin : but now have they both 
seen and hated both me and my Father." 

If the man Jesus wrought his miraculous 
works by the aid of a divine Son, how had they 
seen and hated his Father ? In that case they 
would have seen and hated him and the Son ; 
for what they saw of God was in his works 
through Jesus. 

John xvi. 27, 28 : " For the Father himself 
loveth you, because ye loved me, and have 
believed that I came out from God." 

" I came forth from the Father, and am 
come into the world : again, I leave the world, 
and go to the Father. The disciples then 
said, By this we believe that thou earnest 
forth from God." 

Can any one suppose that the disciples un- 
derstood that it was a divine Son who came 
forth from God and united himself with the 
man Jesus ? 

Col. i. 15-19: "Who is the image of the 
invisible God, the first-born of every creature : 
for by him were all things created, that are 
in heaven and in earth : ... all things were 
created by him, and for him : and he is before 
all things, and by him all things consist. . . . 
Who is the beginning, the first-born from the 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. I47 

dead ; that in all things he might have the 
pre-eminence. For it pleased the Father that 
in him should all fulness dwell." 

Parts of the above have been considered be- 
fore, in their bearings on a special point ; but, 
as the passage has a direct connection with 
our subject, we here introduce all the state- 
ments of Paul therein which relate to our pres- 
ent inquiries. This portion of the chapter is 
often appealed to as evidence of Christ's 
divinity ; and, in our view, it does, along with 
other scriptures, put that doctrine beyond 
controversy. But, quite generally, we believe, 
it is made to apply to a divine Son, called the 
second person in the Godhead, and supposed 
to be in union with the man Jesus. It is 
this reference to an eternal Son that we call 
in question. We see not how the pronouns 
and other expressions here used can denote 
such a Son. The clause, " He was before all 
things," harmonizes with what we have before 
said on John i. i. Indeed, Paul, in these five 
verses of the Epistle to the Colossians, as 
well as in other places, agrees perfectly with 
the first fifteen verses of the Gospel of John. 
The declaration that " he was the first-born 
from the dead " certainly applies to the man 



l48 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

Jesus ; and is not this the same person as " the 
first-born of every creature," to whom be- 
longs the pre-eminence in all things, of which 
Paul speaks ? How natural and rational this 
passage seems, viewed from the position we 
are endeavoring to maintain ! 

Heb. i. 6 : " When he bringeth in the first- 
begotten into the world, he saith, And let all 
the angels of God worship him." 

Our only comment on this passage shall be 
the language of the second Psalm, " Thou art 
my Son : this day have I begotten thee." 
Does not this express a time when he was 
begotten ? Were the common theory correct, 
should not the Psalmist have written, " From 
eternity have I begotten thee " ? 

i Tim. iii. 16 : " Without controversy great 
is the mystery of godliness : God was mani- 
fest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen 
of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed 
on in the world, received up into glory." 

The best explanation of this verse is Christ's 
answer to Philip, John iv. 10, n, 12 ; to which 
we ask the reader to turn, and see how beau- 
tifully these words of Paul agree with those 
of Christ. 

Rev. i. 5 : " From Jesus Christ, who is the 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. I49 

faithful witness, and the first - begotten of 
the dead, and the prince of the kings of the 
earth. Unto him that loved us " and washed 
us from our sins in his own blood [or " cleansed 
us from our sins by his death"]. 

We take this language to apply solely to 
the man Jesus. The descriptions, " the first- 
begotten of the dead," and " washed in his 
own blood," can refer only to his humanity. 
Yet in the eighth verse we see divinity and 
humanity so blended, as to be hardly distin- 
guishable : "I am Alpha and Omega, the 
beginning and the ending, saith the. Lord, 
which is, and which was, and which is to come, 
the Almighty." " True," one may say ; " and 
how fitly does the language apply to the eter- 
nal Son as united to Jesus ! " This might be 
were it in accordance with the teachings of 
Jesus ; but his words permit no such appli- 
cation. Repeatedly and most impressively he 
declares that he received his divine power and 
authority from the Father, whom all confess to 
be " the Almighty." If Jesus claimed to have 
eternal life, and the power to impart it to his 
followers, as in the words, " I give unto them 
eternal life," he yet expressly declares from 
whom, and how, he received this power 
13* 



I50 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

Must we repeat it? Yes; for many minds 
are so bound up in the idea of an eternal 
divine Son, that it requires line upon line, and 
precept upon precept, to free them. We say- 
then, he received it from the Father, as the 
passage next considered will show ; and he 
obtained it from his union with the Father : 
" I and my Father are one." 

John v. 26, 27, 30 : " For as the Father 
hath life in himself; so hath he given to the 
Son to have life in himself; and hath given 
him authority to execute judgment also, be- 
cause he is the Son of man." 

" I can of mine own self do nothing : as I 
hear, I judge : and my judgment is just ; be- 
cause I seek not mine own will, but the will of 
the Father which hath sent me." 

We must confess we see not how these 
passages can be so construed as to meet the 
generally received views of the Son of God. 
All will agree that the Son here mentioned is 
the Son of God. What, then, we ask, is the 
life which the Father hath in himself? It is 
answered, u Underived, eternal life." 

It follows, then, that there was a period 
when the Son did not possess this ; for, if he 
had always possessed it, the Father could not 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. I 5 I 

have given it to him. Hence the eternal life 
which the Son had in himself must have been 
derived from the Father. How it was derived 
we have repeatedly shown. Union with the 
Father would impart it, and with this all other 
things. " All things that the Father hath are 
mine " (John vi. 1 5). "All power is given unto 
me in heaven and in earth " (Matt, xxviii. i8) t 

In the above verses, again, there are pre- 
sented to us two distinct beings, each with his 
own will, the Father and the Son, the Son in- 
ferior and subject to the Father, receiving 
from him eternal life, and authority to execute 
judgment, " because he is the Son of man." 

This same Son, acknowledged by all to be 
the Son of God, says, " I can of mine own 
self do nothing : as I hear, I judge : and my 
judgment is just ; because I seek not mine own 
will, but the will of the Father which hath 
sent me." The theologian of the schools may 
say, " The divine Son, being God, can do noth- 
ing separately from God the Father ; " but 
the added words, " as I hear, I judge," show 
that in this he is in error. 

According to the rules of interpretation 
adopted at the outset, the foregoing three 
verses, we think, establish our doctrine con- 
cerning Christ. 



152 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

Matt. iii. 17 : "This is my beloved Son, in 
whom I am well pleased." To whom would 
John and the bystanders suppose this commu- 
nication from heaven was intended to refer ? 
Was it not to the man whom John had just 
baptized ? So also in the case of the similar 
declaration when Jesus was transfigured. 
Was there any thing in either of these an- 
nouncements which would lead the hearer to 
think of an eternal divine Son ? There was 
in both a manifestation of the living God ; but 
it came from the Father, of whom Jesus speaks 
as dwelling in him. 

We see in the above no Son other than the 
man Jesus, the only-begotten Son. 

2. Cor. v. 19: "To wit, that God was in 
Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, 
not imputing their trespasses unto them." 

Note, Paul says " God was in Christ ; " and 
this God, he repeatedly tells us, is " the 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." In this he 
agrees with Christ, who often impressed on 
his hearers the great truth that the Father 
was in him. But never does he thus speak 
of a divine Son ; and never, we may add, does 
Paul thus speak. Paul often refers to God 
the Father and to the Lord Jesus Christ as 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 153 

two beings. Rom. i. 7 : " Grace to you and 
peace from God our Father, and the Lord 
Jesus Christ," is an example. This apostle's 
salutations and benedictions were, for a 
while, unintelligible to us. We could not see 
why he should make such a distinction be- 
tween the Father and the Son ; for we sup- 
posed the Son to be inherently God as well as 
the Father. But, when we came to understand 
that they were really two beings, who, though 
united, could be distinguished individually, our 
perplexity vanished. The benediction in the 
second letter to the Corinthians, in which 
the three persons in the Trinity are intro- 
duced, then became clear to us. Yet this 
benediction is often cited as proof of an 
eternal Trinity. 

But it must not be forgotten that Christ 
established the Christian Trinity some thirty 
years prior to Paul's writing that letter, when 
he promised the disciples " another Com- 
forter" should come after he was glorified. 
When, therefore, the latter came on the day of 
Pentecost, the Trinity was completed ; and, 
since the Trinity was comprised in the Com- 
forter, as before shown, and as he was to be 
thereafter the only spiritual Teacher, how ap- 



154 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

propriate that He should be recognized in His 
full character by the apostles and all subse- 
quent religious teachers ! 

When the three thousand were converted 
and made heirs of eternal glory by the opera- 
tion of the Comforter on the occasion of his 
advent in his new position, how appropriate 
that these disciples should be baptized in the 
name of this Trinity, thus recognizing each 
and all the divine Agents through whom the 
grand spiritual transformation had been ac- 
complished. 

And how could the apostles, when writing to 
the churches, do less than to call the atten- 
tion of the Christians who had just emerged 
from heathen darkness, to the same Trinity, 
especially having themselves made such ad- 
vancement in the knowledge of Christ's king- 
dom through the teaching of this same agency ? 
It would naturally be their aim to introduce 
this subject on all proper occasions ; and 
hence we find it so generally brought forward 
in their letters. 

Phil. ii. 5-1 1 : " Let this mind be in you, 
which was also in Christ Jesus : who, being in 
the form of God, thought it not robbery to be 
equal with God," &c. This is also one of the 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. I 55 

passages confidently relied on to prove the in- 
herent divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
Doubtless it does imply his divine charac- 
ter. But does it teach a native divinity ? 
Does it not rather look towards a derived 
divinity ? " Being in the form of God." But, 
if he were eternal, and of the very essence of 
the Father, he would in himself be God. How 
does it sound to say God was in the form of 
God ? Does not the very expression convey 
the idea of something less than God ? On 
the other hand, if we assume that the apostle 
was speaking, as doubtless he was, of the Son, 
and that the Son was the man Jesus, possess- 
ing soul and body; then, as the soul is spirit, 
and God is a Spirit, we have in this soul the 
nearest approach to the form or image of God 
of any thing of which we have knowledge. 
Again : " thought it not robbery to be equal 
with God." If the apostle had in mind a di- 
vine Son, it would be hardly proper to speak 
of him as " equal with God ; " for he would, 
even if united with the man Jesus, be verily 
God. There would be no equality in the case. 
But viewed from the position we advocate 
how naturally the passage reads. We behold 
a human Son infinitely inferior to the Father ; 



156 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

but, by virtue of his union with the Fa- 
ther, " all things are given into his hands." 
He has them rightfully, and not by " rob- 
bery ; " and his Father, the giver, loses nothing 
by the bestowal. God makes the Son his 
equal by this blessed union. Who can con- 
template this without being lifted in adoration 
and gratitude to his heavenly Father, and 
without a new emotion of love to the beloved 
Son ? Oh ! there is sublimity in this short 
sentence ; — the man Jesus, our Brother, was 
made equal with the eternal God. Yea, 
more : he was made ONE with the incompre- 
hensible Jehovah, — one with him in creation, 
one in the care and government of his people, 
one in the sojourn on earth, one in the rend- 
ing of the tomb and the ascension, and one 
with him still in carrying on the work of 
redemption. 

How perfectly this idea of Christ agrees 
with his description of the Comforter ! — God 
the Father, himself the Son, and their per- 
sonified action the Comforter, — three in one. 

1 Cor. xv. 27, 28 : " For he hath put all 
things under his feet. But when he saith, all 
things are put under him, it is manifest that 
he is excepted, which did put all things under 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 1 57 

him. And when all things shall be subdued 
unto him, then shall the Son also himself be 
subject unto him that put all things under 
him, that God may be all in all." 

Much ingenuity has been expended to 
make this passage harmonize with the com- 
mon theory of a divine Son, and quite to the 
satisfaction, no doubt, of the writers and many 
others. Whitby, as quoted by Scott, evinces 
here great ability, and to us seems more plausi- 
ble than any other commentator we have seen. 
Thousands, doubtless, among them Dr. Adam 
Clarke, have accepted his views. We have 
not space to give Whitby's arguments, and 
shall not therefore attempt to meet them. In 
discoursing on any subject, it is important, 
first of all, that the premises be right ; since 
otherwise no dependence can be put on our 
deductions. We understand Whitby to main- 
tain that the doctrine of an eternal divine 
Son is here taught by the apostle. We know 
nothing concerning such a Son. We have 
never heard of such a Son except from sources 
not authoritative. The Son revealed to men 
is the first-born humanity of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. Let this be borne in mind, and the 
passage needs no labored explanation. It ex- 

H 



158 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

plains itself, and means just what it obviously 
says, — at least, what seems to us its meaning ; 
and we think we understand the apostle. This, 
however, is opinion and not authority ; and, 
though we recommend to build only on author- 
ity, we will state our opinion. 

Our ideas are as follows : When the 
wicked shall have been consigned to their 
place, and the righteous received into their 
everlasting habitations, and death swallowed 
up in victory, then Christ's mediatorial work 
in redemption, and in a governmental capacity, 
will of course be completed, but not, as is 
generally stated, his entire mediatorial work. 
His mediatorial position will henceforward be 
only in worship. He will be the object 
through whom the Church triumphant will 
pay their adoration to the living God. There 
will be no separation of God the Father from 
his only begotten Son : the redeemed will see 
and know God only in and through the Son. 
With the Father he will receive the honors of 
the saints. This possibly was expressed in 
one of those songs to which the exile in Pat- 
mos was allowed to listen : " Blessing, and 
honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that 
sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 1 59 

for ever and ever" (Rev. v. 13). The Lamb, 
we see, has equal honors with him who sitteth 
upon the throne, confirming Christ's own 
words ; for in heaven they do "honor the Son 
even as they honor the Father." 

We offer these meditations as a contribu- 
tion perhaps to the understanding of this pas- 
sage. 

Matt. xxvi. 53: "Thinkest thou that I 
cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall 
presently give me more than twelve legions 
of angels ? " 

The pronouns " I," &c, which Jesus thus 
applies to himself, can relate to him only as a 
man ; and they are generally so understood : 
and, as he uses them here in the same sense 
as elsewhere, it is a fair inference that they 
generally refer to his humanity, to the exclu- 
sion of any idea of divine sonship. He could 
not of himself command the army of angels, 
but must ask it of the Father. 

Thus might we go on quoting Scripture, 
and filling page after page, enlarging our little 
book, however, beyond a reasonable limit. We 
must stop somewhere ; and it is believed suffi- 
cient evidence has been presented to satisfy 
a candid mind that the doctrine of an eternal 



l6o BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

divine Son is not taught in the Bible, hence 
can be only an imagination in men's minds. 

We are unable to see that any benefit can 
be derived from such a Son. The Bible, and, 
so far as we know, all God's dealings, are for 
the good of mankind. But of what advan- 
tage to the race is this alleged divine Son ? 
We have literally a Son of God and Son of 
man, concerning whose origin we are in- 
structed, of whom we can conceive, who 
is truly divine and truly human. We are 
taught also how he is divine and how he 
is human ; and all is within the range of 
our faculties. We have this Son of man, 
divine on the very principle on which he has 
so been held for the last fifteen hundred 
years ; that is, by union with God. The 
councils and the Church say, " by union with 
the eternal Son of God : " Christ and we say, 
" by union with God the Father." 

On this point only exists our dissent respect- 
ing the divinity of the Son of man. But the dif- 
ference is very essential : on it hinges the reality 
or non-reality of an. eternal Trinity in the God- 
head. Just here lies the insurmountable bar- 
rier with many. " What ! " say they : " have all 
the fathers, the great scholars, the profound and 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. l6l 

far-seeing theologians of the past and the 
present, been laboring under an error on this 
subject ? This cannot be." So, too, former 
advocates of the pre-existence of Christ's 
human soul have paused, not being prepared 
to say, on the one hand, that the doctrine of 
an eternal Trinity was false, or, on the other, 
that their views of Christ were not sufficiently 
supported. They found his pre-existent human- 
ity too clearly and repeatedly declared by the 
Saviour, to allow it to be seriously doubted. 
On the other hand, they were not ready to set 
at naught all they had said and written in 
favor of an eternal Trinity. Thus they were 
at a stand-still. 

This very difficulty held ourself in suspense 
for years. At length we resolved to ex- 
amine the evidence of an eternal Trinity. 
After carefully searching the word of God, we 
found nothing which we could accept as evi- 
dence of such a doctrine. As in regard to an 
eternal Son, we found what various com- 
mentators called evidence ; but it was no evi- 
dence to us. We have had occasion to refer 
to some of the alleged evidence of the eter- 
nal divinity of the Son, and have seen its 
insufficiency. So far as we have seen, the 

i4* 



l62 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

doctrine of an eternal Trinity is based chiefly 
on the alleged eternity of the Son. There is 
not the same direct evidence against an eter- 
nal Trinity as against an eternal Son ; and 
there need not be ; for, if there is no eternal 
Son, there can be no eternal Trinity. 

We doubt not that the Scriptures urged by 
various writers as proofs of an eternal Son 
and an eternal Trinity were to iliem satisfac- 
tory. The Rev. Theodore Parker once cour- 
teously said, in relation to an argument which 
we stated to him for the divinity of Christ, 
" It may be evidence to you, but it is not to 
me : what is evidence to one man may not be 
to another." This was probably the fact 
with Dr. Watts. He wished, it has been 
said, to change the phraseology of some of his 
doxologies ; though this has been doubted. 

In relation to the Spirit, it may be admitted 
that there are certain expressions which seem 
to imply its personification in the Old Testa- 
ment. They are such as " the Spirit of 
God," " God by his Spirit," and others like 
these. But, when we considered that the ap- 
plication of the idea of person to any of these 
expressions would put us in opposition to 
Jesus and to John, who distinctly say that the 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 1 63 

Holy Ghost (that is, as we understand it, the 
person or personification of the Holy Ghost) 
was not yet given, and could not be given, 
till Jesus was glorified, we saw that the ex- 
pressions must have reference merely to the 
divine influence in general, which had been 
imparted more or less for more than four 
thousand years. In view of such testimony, 
we dared not say that the Spirit had existed 
as a person from all eternity. 

If the words of Peter, " Holy men spake as 
they were moved by the Holy Ghost," are 
brought as an objection to this view, on the 
ground that they imply the existence of the 
Spirit as a person in the days of the prophets, 
the answer is that Peter might quite proper- 
ly write thus some thirty years after the di- 
vine influence had been personified by Christ, 
as the Comforter or Holy Ghost. 

Let us here pause, and glance again at 
some of the manifestations and doings of 
this complex being, — the Son in his union 
with the Father. We find different names 
applied to him, such as " God," in the expres- 
sions, " God created," " God said, Let us make 
man ; " then as " Lord God," in speaking to 
Adam ; then as " Lord," in addressing Cain. 



164 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

He is called " the God of Israel," " the Lord 
God of Israel," " the God of Abraham," " the 
angel of the covenant," " the messenger of 
God," " God of the prophets," &c. 

He manifested himself now alone, as to 
Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and others ; 
and now attended with angels, as to Abra- 
ham in the plains of Mamre, and to Jacob at 
Mahanaim. He assumed different appear- 
ances as occasion required. To Adam 
(probably), to Abraham, Jacob, Joshua, and 
others, he appeared as a man ; to Moses as a 
bush on fire ; to Israel as a cloud, and as a 
pillar of fire ; as a dreadful fire, smoke, and 
sound of trumpet ; as a cloud resting on the 
tabernacle ; and so on. He was not re- 
stricted to any one name or appearance, or 
mode of communicating his will. 

These are some of the names and charac- 
ters under which he manifested himself from 
the creation down to the time of his advent 
into our world. Now we behold this same 
complex being, divine and human, who cre- 
ated all things, and has interested himself in 
all the affairs of men, who has been wor- 
shipped and adored by every devout person 
from Adam, to Mary " the mother of our 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 165 

Lord," — we see him clothed in flesh, and 
dwelling on earth as one of the human family. 
But how few recognized the Creator of the 
universe, the God of Noah, Abraham, Moses, 
David, Elijah, and others, in that helpless 
infant in the manger ! Verily, he humbled 
himself and became obedient, eventually, unto 
death. But he was not without witnesses. 
Angels knew him, and were sent down to 
herald his coming. 

Simeon, taught from above, hailed in him 
God's salvation. The wise men of the East, 
under the same guidance, came hundreds of 
miles to offer him their treasures. Led by 
" the star," they no sooner saw him than 
" they fell down and worshipped him." But 
why worship that infant child more than any 
other ? We have no reason to think that in 
appearance he differed from other children, 
or that he excited unusual attention except 
in those who were taught from above. They 
could see a reason for their homage ; and why 
should they withhold it ? for in him, the first- 
begotten Son, was the eternal Jehovah, whose 
companion the Son had been in the movements 
directed towards man through all ages. We 
would say, "Let not only all the angels of God, 
but all the inhabitants of earth worship him ! " 



l66 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

It is not in our purpose to trace the Son in 
his early life. We find no manifestations of 
the divinity that was in him till his earthly 
powers were fully developed. His divinity 
being perfect, if it was to be manifested 
through humanity, this humanity should be 
perfect. Hence he was in obscurity as to 
his divine character, till he had reached the 
age of maturity. Then, after sanctioning by 
his example the rite of initiation into the 
Christian Church militant which he was about 
to set up, we see him " manifesting forth his 
glory," as that same being, God and man, 
which he had been in the past ages, although 
the man is now more apparent, having the 
addition of the physical body. 

See him at Simon's table, dining with the 
other men as one of them, and like them in 
outward appearance: then, at the same table 
as a God he says to the weeping sinner, " Thy 
sins are forgiven." The Jews murmur, and 
say, " Who can forgive sins but God only ? " 
True, indeed ; and here is the eternal God 
the Father, united with his Son in the body. 
They, untaught by the Spirit, could see only 
the human person : he was to them but one 
like themselves. We do not wonder that 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. l6? 

when, all at once, he assumed the divine pre- 
rogative, and pronounced forgiveness on one 
whom they knew only as a vile outcast, they 
broke into murmurs. How little did Simon 
and his guests suspect with whom they were 
dining! Yet the penitent sinner knew. At 
least she knew enough to throw herself, a 
suppliant, at his feet ; and she received from 
him a benefaction as much greater than the 
highest potentate of earth can confer, as the 
heavens are higher than the earth. The mur- 
murings at Simon's table were, however, no 
more surprising than what we hear in our 
own day, when it is confidently asserted from 
some of our pulpits that this spiritual Healer 
was only a man. 

But let us follow this man (for such he was) 
a little farther. When crossing the lake, we 
find him in the stern of the boat, asleep, as 
any wearied man might be ; but as soon as 
the affrighted disciples awake him, as God he 
speaks to the winds and waves, " Peace, be 
still ; " and immediately " there was a great 
calm." When he was with the sisters of Laza- 
rus, and saw them and the Jews weeping, he 
also " wept" in sympathy with them ; but, at the 
grave, with the power of the Almighty he said 



l68 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

" Lazarus, come forth." " And he that was dead 
came forth." 

In these and in most of his miracles, we see 
the God and the man plainly distinguished. 
His own explanation of all these mighty deeds 
we have so often given, that it seems super- 
fluous to say again that he refers all his power 
to his union with the Father, of whom he 
speaks as dwelling in him, and doing the 
works. " I and my Father are one," — Father, 
not a divine Son. " The Father that dwelleth 
in me, he doeth the works." As if the Saviour 
said, " I as a man with you, and my Father 
the eternal God, are one ; and he through me 
doeth the works." " Therefore the Son of 
man hath power on earth to forgive sins." 

Now, why may we not conceive of God as 
dealing with men in this same way, and 
through this same agency, — viz., his Son, — in 
the ages before the incarnation, as afterward ? 

Has the reader ever markeH the beautiful 
coincidence between the account of the crea- 
tion, and the narrative of Christ's works ? 
"God said, Let there be light: and there was 
light." Christ said to the leper, " Be thou 
clean ; " and he was clean. The cleansing 
of the leper was as really God's act as the 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 169 

creation of light. "God said, Let the waters 
under the heaven be gathered together unto 
one place, and let the dry land appear : and it 
was so." Christ said to the waters and the 
winds, " Peace, be still ; " and it was so. God 
said, " Let the earth bring forth grass, the 
herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding 
fruit : and it was so." Christ said to the pal- 
sied man, " Arise, take up thy bed, and walk ; " 
and he did so. " God said, Let there be lights 
in the firmament of heaven : . . . and it was 
so." Christ said to the corpse of the young 
man of Nain, " I say unto thee, Arise : and he 
that was dead sat up, and began to speak." 

We might proceed thus with most of 
Christ's divine works in the flesh ; for " He 
spake, and it was done : he commanded, and 
it stood fast." No one will deny that it as 
really required divine power to do these works, 
as to perform the acts of creation. 

If, now, we admit Christ's own words to 
be true, just as he spoke them and evidently 
intended they should be understood, and as 
they evidently were understood, at least by the 
apostles, — that he, the man Jesus, as to his soul, 
was " the beginning of the creation of God," 
and that God the Father was " in him and he 

*5 



I70 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

in God " " before the foundation of the world " 
(for if he was the beginning of God's creation 
he must have existed before the world), — then 
all the representations in the Bible, from the 
first verse of Genesis to the last of Revelation, 
so far as they have reference to God and Christ, 
their relations and works, are completely sim- 
plified, and made clear and comprehensible. 

On the other hand, to maintain the doctrine 
of an eternally begotten Son, and an eternally 
personified Spirit, veils the whole in impene- 
trable mystery, and, so far as concerns the 
Son, involves (we say it with deference) self- 
contradiction and palpable inconsistency. 

We add a few words on the doctrine of an 
eternal Trinity in the Godhead. Mark, it is 
an eternal Trinity to which we object ; for, as 
already said, we believe and rejoice in the 
Christian Trinity, as established by Christ, 
and consummated in the blessed Comforter. 
But whence and through whom came this 
doctrine of an eternal Trinity ? When did 
the Church accept it as one of her essential 
doctrines ? So far as our knowledge reaches, 
it was not heard of in the first and second 
centuries. Yet there is no doubt that it has 
been firmly held for the last fifteen or sixteen 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 171 

hundred years. But does this establish its 
claim to be accepted as a doctrine in Christ's 
Church ? To many it may so seem ; but we 
are not of that number. No matter if the 
Ecumenical Council of Nice, and the creed of 
the pious and world-famed Athanasius, assert 
this as a fundamental doctrine of the Church : 
we cannot accept it at their hands. With one 
bound we leave them all, and come directly to 
Him who speaks as never man spake. We 
sit down at his feet, and, Mary-like, learn our 
religious creed from his lips, and from the men 
whom he personally instructed ; but from his 
own words mostly we obtain what we have 
written. 

Allow us to quote a- sentence or two from 
the Athanasian Creed, the main doctrines of 
which are wont to be . incorporated into 
Church Articles. " The Father is made of 
none, neither created, nor begotten : the 
Son is of the Father, alone, neither made nor 
created, but begotten." Does not this very 
language show that the Son was derived from 
the Father ? If we understand words, a be- 
gotten is necessarily a derived being. Yet it 
is said that both are alike eternal. Such 
logic we cannot comprehend. 



172 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

Look at this " mystical Trinity," as it is 
taught in the schools of theology, — three per- 
sons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, one in 
the Godhead from all eternity ; and this, they 
claim, is what John meant in his first Epistle, 
when he says that they " bear record in 
heaven." Record of what ? The reply is, "of 
the doctrine that these three are one in the 
Godhead." We do not so understand it. But 
suppose it true : how does that affect us ? 
Suppose Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were 
one in the Godhead millions of years ago : 
what application can be made of it to our spirit- 
ual benefit ? Could it appear to us any thing 
other than mystery ? We might, indeed, try 
to contemplate it ; but can we make it prac- 
tical ? No : we need a Trinity which we can 
understand, and apply to ourselves in the 
great matter of our salvation. Such a one we 
have from our blessed Redeemer ; and we re- 
joice in it, and praise him for it. 

It is maintained by some that the union 
of Christ with the Father is simply that for 
which he prays in the words, " Neither pray I 
for these alone," — his immediate disciples, — 
" but for them also which shall believe on me 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 1 73 

through their word," — all later disciples, — ■ 
" that they all may be one ; as thou, Father, 
art in me, and I in thee, that they also may 
be one in us" (John xvii. 20, 21). The next 
verse seems to refer to the future state : 
" And the glory which thou gavest me I have 
given them ; that they may be one, even as 
we are one." 

No doubt Jesus here prays for the oneness 
of his disciples ; i. e., that they might be like 
him and his Father in being united in a spirit 
of love and purity. And it was just what 
might have been expected from Jesus, when 
praying for his brother man. How could he 
have prayed for less, when he had enjoined on 
his disciples to be " perfect " as their " Father 
in heaven is perfect" ? 

But this is by no means that union of 
which we have been speaking, — that union of 
which Christ speaks when he says, " I and 
my Father are one." For, were it so, why do 
not all Christians have the power to work 
miracles, as he had, and those also whom he 
specially empowered ? 

There is a oneness of the believer with 
Christ, which is secured by the faith of the 
believer in him. This faith unites him to 
15* 



174 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

Christ, so that by the economy of grace he 
inherits the promises, and becomes, according 
to Paul (Rom. viii. 17), an " heir of God, and 
joint heir with Christ." But, the ground of 
this union being faith, the believer must have 
an act in it. If he does not exercise faith 
there is no union. Not so in the union of 
Christ with the Father. The act of uniting 
was purely the act of the Father. The Son, 
a derived being, could have no more power 
to unite himself with the Father, or aid in 
thus uniting himself, than his brother man 
whom they had placed on earth. This unit- 
ing was as exclusively the act of the Father 
as the begetting. In the nature of things it 
could not be otherwise. Of course this union 
was such, that neither, within his sphere, 
would act without the concurrence of the 
other. Their wills were in perfect harmony. 

But it was otherwise often with the disci- 
ples in their relation to Christ. He had 
occasionally to reprove them. " Ye know not 
what ye ask," " Ye know not what spirit ye 
are of," were his mild rebukes. 

Again : as has been often said by others, 
whenever the apostles had occasion to refer to 
the power by which they wrought their mira- 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 1 75 

cles, they always named Jesus Christ as that 
power. If their union with God was similar 
to Christ's, why did they not refer to God in- 
stead of Christ ? Why did not Peter say to 
the crippled man, " In the name of God, rise 
up and walk " ? We do not recollect a single 
instance in which they claimed divine power 
except through Christ. Nor do we find them 
claiming any union with Christ, or any power 
or authority from him, except through their 
faith in him. How very different the case 
with Christ ! Though disclaiming any power 
independently of the Father, yet, in his union 
with him, he claims all the power his Father 
possesses. " All power is given unto me in 
heaven and in earth" (Matt, xxviii. 18). 
" All things that the Father hath are mine " 
(John xvi. 15). "All mine are thine, and 
thine are mine" (John xvii. 10). 

In all this, faith in God, as a condition of 
this union, or on any other account, is not 
once mentioned. Could the apostles on such 
ground claim their union with Christ ? 

In John xiii. 13, he says, "Ye call me 
Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so 
I am." Does he pray for such a union of 
the disciples with himself and the Father 



176 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

as would justify them in claiming these 
titles ? 

How would this comport with his instruc- 
tions, Matt, xxiii. 8-10, where he warns them 
not to be called " rabbi," " master," or " fa- 
ther " ? 

In Luke vi. 46, he asks, " Why call ye me, 
Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I 
say ? " He does not disapprove of their call- 
ing him Lord, but of their not obeying him 
as such. Did he pray that the disciples 
might have authority to be called Lord ? 

When Paul affirms (1 Cor. xii. 3), t( No man 
can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy 
Ghost," he implies that it is a divine influence 
which urges the soul to apply to him this title, 
— a pretty sure proof, we think, that he is 
Lord in a divine sense. Was it his prayer that 
his disciples should hold a similar position ? 

Further : to worship any other being than 
God, we know is idolatrous and impious. Now, 
it cannot be denied that Jesus, on several oc- 
casions while on earth, received worship, and 
that he administered no reproof to those who 
offered it. 

How different is this from the conduct of 
the apostles ! When Cornelius fell down at 



ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY. 1 77 

the feet of Peter, and worshipped him, Peter 
said to him, " Stand up : I myself also am a 
man." When the people at Lystra were 
about to offer sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas, 
they rent their clothes, and ran in amongst 
the people, crying out and saying, " Sirs, why 
do ye these things ? " Thus, while Christ ac- 
cepted worship as his right, the apostles re- 
fused it as an impious service. Can any one 
imagine that Christ prayed that the disciples, 
like himself, might have such a union with 
the Father as should constitute a claim to re- 
ceive worship ? 

Besides, Christ does not say they already 
are, but prays that they may be one at a future 
time, just as he prays that they may be with 
him and behold his glory, — referring clearly to 
future time : whereas the union of Christ with 
the Father was before the foundation of the 
world, and was such as to enable him to 
take part in the creation, as we have be- 
fore shown. Paul writes to the Colossians 
that " He created all things that were 
created," and again to the Hebrews, that "by 
him God made the worlds." Did Christ pray 
that the disciples' union with him should be 
such as to give them power to create worlds ? 



178 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

We presume that all the apostles, after the 
Pentecost, recognized God in Christ. If they 
applied to Christ, they applied to God. If 
they called on Christ, they called on God. 
But we do not suppose that they generally 
understood in what way the, man Jesus stood 
connected with God. We doubt whether 
Paul, even, who was more thoroughly in- 
structed in the principles of Christ's king- 
dom than most of his brethren, had a full 
understanding of the manner of this connec- 
tion, though clear as to the fact " that God 
was in Christ, reconciling the world unto 
himself." And they all undoubtedly had a 
full conception of the reality of the union ; 
for the Comforter was to guide them into 
all truth; and the reality of this union, not 
the manner, was the truth. God united a 
soul with the body of Adam : but he did 
not tell us the manner of the union ; and it 
has not yet been discovered. John evidently 
had clear views, both of the connection, and 
the manner, of the union of which we are 
speaking. He refers to it as a personal 
union, by which the two became one ; hence 
the fulness and clearness of his writings on 
the subject. No other sacred writer begins 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. I 79 

to exhibit so clear an understanding of it 
as he. 

To conclude this topic : The apostles claim 
their divine power, and Christians their eter- 
nal life, from Christ, and through faith in him. 
Jesus claims his power and authority directly 
from his" Father, and not through faith in 
him, but through his perfect union with the 
Father. This is the distinct and essential 
difference between the union of Christ with 
his Father, and the union between the apos- 
tles and Christ, and believers with each 
other. 

CONCLUDING REMARKS. 

It has long been a question with us, How 
is it that the doctrines of an eternal Son and 
an eternal Trinity have been able to retain, 
through so many centuries, their place in 
Christ's Church ? The arguments and the 
assumed philosophy used by good, pious, and 
able men to prove that they are found in the 
Bible are to us matters of painful reflection. 
We have searched critically, and, we think, 
thoroughly, and have not found in the sacred 
volume the first sentence to support these. 
There are many passages from which a reader 



l80 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

might, if he wished, infer them ; and, with 
the doctrines already in his mind, as is the 
fact with most theological inquirers, he might 
regard such passages as proofs, even though 
not understanding the doctrines. The first 
verse of John's Gospel, on which we have com- 
mented, may be taken as an example. All the 
deductions from it amount to just this : be- 
cause the Son was with God at the beginning 
of the creation of our world, he was with him 
in all past eternity. All other arguments 
for the eternity of the Son of God, so far as we 
are acquainted with them, when sifted down, 
leave nothing beyond the same inference. Is 
it singular that we cannot accept such logic ? 
The only plausible answer to our question 
above is, Men go to men in order to satisfy 
themselves in regard to religious doctrines. 
If any thing is a little obscure, the learned 
betake themselves to the fathers or similar 
sources, and others to their family commen- 
tary, instead of turning to the New Testament, 
and carefully comparing its statements. Is it 
not so, and largely, even in our theological 
schools ? Is not more time spent in search- 
ing for what the church teachers have said on 
difficult subjects than in pondering the words 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 151 

of Christ and of his apostles with a childlike 
dependence on Christ's promise of the Com- 
forter, as The Leader " into all truth " ? 

Men too often adopt a received doctrine as 
an undoubted truth ; and, if they go to the 
Bible on the subject, it is to find the proof of 
it, not to see whether it is true. How many 
students of theology are there who without 
prepossessions go directly to the word of God 
to see whether the doctrine of an eternal 
Son is there found ? Do not most of them 
assume the truth of this doctrine, and that 
the Bible contains it ? We believe, that, if 
one tithe of the time and labor spent to make 
the Bible prove the doctrine of an eternal Son 
and an eternal Trinity had been earnestly 
given to find the real teachings of the Scrip- 
tures on these points, the Church centuries 
ago would have been freed from the burden of 
these mysteries. 

We are not unaware that we may be charged 
with setting ourselves up as umpire in the 
teachings of the New Testament on these sub- 
jects : this is far from our thoughts. No : we 
search the Scriptures for ourselves, and only 
ask others to do the same, and to follow what 
they there find. 

16 



l82 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

We hear that certain theologians are agi- 
tating a question, whether, in the divine 
nature of the Son, there was not required and 
did not exist something capable of bearing 
suffering ; as otherwise the penalty of the 
divine law could not be fully executed, and 
that several passages of Scripture would not 
find an adequate meaning, and so a com- 
plete and acceptable atonement fail of being 
made. We are not quite sure that we state 
the point correctly ; but it is what we gather 
from representations made to us. 

We recoil at once from any such idea. 
What ! God suffer the penalty of his own law, 
which he gave to a being of his own creating, 
and wholly for the benefit of that being ? 
Why give a law at all, if, when broken, he 
would bear the penalty? Would he not 
thus encourage further transgression ? 

But, supposing that there were in the divine 
nature such a capacity for suffering (an idea 
wholly inadmissible, and at war with all we 
know of God, — supposing, however, that it 
could be and were so), would his suffering 
fulfil the divine law given to man, " In the 
day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" ? 
Could that edict be changed to say, " In the 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 1 83 

day thou eatest thereof I will die for you " ? 
No : God must change before one jot or tittle 
of his law can fail. It was given to man for 
him to keep : if he broke it, man must fulfil 
it ; and to fulfil it is either to obey it or to 
bear its penalty. 

It will be seen how exactly our view of 
the nature and character of the Son meets 
the aforesaid inquiry. We see a Son, taken 
into union with the Father before the man 
who received and broke the law was created ; 
and this Son, of the same nature as the diso- 
bedient man, is the one only being who could 
put himself in a situation to bear the penalty 
of the law, and redeem his brother. There is 
no need of imagining in the divine nature a 
latent capacity to endure suffering, or of dis- 
cussing the question as to the reality of such a 
capacity. In the Son of God, who came down 
from heaven for this very purpose, we have 
one exactly fitted to meet the exigency ; and 
he accomplished it. 

We close with a few words to our fellow- 
Christians. Dear brethren in Christ, — in 
this form of address we include all who, by 
the effectual grace of the triune Comforter, 
have been born into the kingdom of God, and 



184 BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. 

thus made joint heirs with the Lord Jesus 
Christ, without reference to any distinctions of 
name or sect, — in the name of our common 
Redeemer we ask and beseech you, in judg- 
ing of what we have here written, to lay aside 
all creeds and dogmas that cannot be sup- 
ported by the teachings of the adored Saviour, 
or of his inspired apostles. Take the simple 
Word, as it is given us, with the explanations 
which are found in itself, and pray for the en- 
lightening aid of that Comforter who is the 
promised Leader into all truth. 

Lean not too much on the authority or 
ability of men ; but, so far as possible, let 
scripture explain scripture. We think we 
have learned that the sacred writings are 
their own best commentaries. If, on full 
search and comparison, you do not find the 
views, as here set forth, to agree with the 
instructions of our common Lord and Master, 
cast them aside. To follow Christ is the 
only path of safety. But, if you find they 
agree with his teachings, on yourselves rests 
the responsibility as to receiving them. 



rsri/r 



